Texas Ed Service Center Signs On for Parental Notification Services

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 06/09/09

##AUTHORSPLIT###- -->

The Texas Region 17 Education Service Center (ESC) has contracted with SchoolReach, a K-12 parent notification service, to make the contact system available to member schools at a discount. The service center is an organization created to provide services to schools in Region 17, which encompasses the 20 counties surrounding Lubbock, Texas.

"Making this service available to our membership means school administrators have new tools for improving communication, trust and, ultimately, collaboration between school and home," said Kyle Wargo, executive director of the service center. "Now parents can receive timely, accurate information at a moment's notice, any hour or day of the week."

SchoolReach allows administrators to create a brief message, select a specified list of parents, teachers, district staff, or community members, and distribute the message to the list members simultaneously. Messages can be delivered through voice, e-mail, or text messaging. The SchoolReach system allows the user to create reports detailing call data, such as which contacts received the message, who listened to the entire message, and when the message was sent to an answering machine.

The service is sold in one- to three-year contracts and includes enough storage for each individual school to include all student phone numbers and up to 99 user-defined lists.

SchoolReach is a subsidiary of St. Louis-based GroupCast, an instant messaging notification service.