Indiana Districts Deploy Web-Based Parent Notification System

• By David Nagel
• 08/20/09

Sixteen public school districts in Indiana have deployed the SchoolReach notification system from Groupcast within the last three months. The districts adopted the notification system to help with emergency alerts and parent communications.

SchoolReach is a hosted ASP solution that provides customized phone and text messages with voice and Web activation. Its reporting capabilities include summaries, real-time progress reports, template-based custom reports, and support for exporting data as CSV files.

Some other features include:

• 540,000 delivery attempts per hour dialing;
• Caller ID displays the school's phone number;
• Reporting capabilities;
• Alternate messages, automatic retries, and machine detection;
• Polling and survey support; and
• Support for several different methods for creating messages, including text to speech, .wav file uploads, and toll-free recording over the phone.

One of the new districts to implement the notification system was Rockville Community School Corp. "We wanted an easier and more efficient way to contact all parents regarding school activities, Title I Night, open houses, attendance notifications and delayed openings due to inclement weather," said Jana Crites, technology director. "The robust features SchoolReach offers for the price made it the right system for us."

In other SchoolReach news, the company said it's partnered with the Wilson Education Center, which serves several schools across Indiana. Through the partnership, WEC schools will be able to sign on for SchoolReach at a discount.

"When our schools and districts select SchoolReach as their communications system of choice they will realize instant benefits and significant results," said Phil Partenheimer, executive director of the Wilson Education Center, in a prepared statement. "We spoke to several current customers before selecting SchoolReach as our partner and the responses were all very positive."

Further information about SchoolReach can be found here.