Indiana Schools Increase Communications with Parents Using SchoolReach Automated Parental Notification System

Research shows that positive relationships among parents, school staff, and students are fundamental to student success, and further, that positive relationships are created and maintained by proactive and consistent communication. To build that lasting bridge of school-to-home communications, 16 public school districts in Indiana have recently joined numerous others in the state by selecting the SchoolReach parent notification system to provide emergency alert and parental notification messaging for its schools.

In addition, SchoolReach executives announced today that they have entered into a partnership with the Wilson Education Center , one of nine education service centers across the state. Through the partnership agreement, the SchoolReach emergency notification system will be made available at an exclusive discount to the service center’s member schools, as well as other Indiana schools that opt to purchase via Wilson’s online procurement site.

“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. “We spoke to several current customers before selecting SchoolReach as our partner and the responses were all very positive.”

The SchoolReach parent notification system delivers personalized phone or text messages to parents, staff or other select groups by way of home, office or cell phones. Using advanced technology, SchoolReach allows a school administrator to record a brief message for delivery to an extensive, or selective, list of parents, teachers or students, simultaneously. Because the SchoolReach system is able to call parents at a preferred phone number or multiple phone numbers, the system performs especially well in emergency situations, when every second is crucial.

In the past three months, 16 Indiana districts, including North Lawrence Community Schools, Scott County and Rockville Community School Corporation, have implemented SchoolReach. They join a large number of public and private Indiana districts, including the Diocese of Evansville, that are already seeing great results using SchoolReach as their premiere communications solution.

“Our parents are going to wonder how we survived without this solution for so long,” said Scott Borden, director of technology for Scott County School District 2. “We hope it reflects our commitment to enhancing our communications efforts to be more timely and accurate between school and home.”

Jana Crites, technology director at Rockville Community School Corporation, added this, “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. The robust features SchoolReach offers for the price made it the right system for us.”

Because the SchoolReach system is web-based, it doesn’t require any additional hardware or phone lines for schools to install. It also offers customizable features, giving administrators the ability to automate absentee notices, make multi-language recordings, and launch phone-delivered parent polls and surveys.

“These new implementations and our new relationship with the Wilson Education Center will give us a significant springboard to grow our presence in Indiana,” said Paul Langhorst, vice president of operations at GroupCast, SchoolReach’s parent company. “Our expansion in the K-12 school market in Indiana symbolizes our continued growth and confirms our commitment to provide districts across the county with an affordable, easy-to-use, web-based parental notification solution.”

ABOUT GROUPCAST AND SCHOOLREACH

GroupCast is a St. Louis-based instant messaging notification service, delivering automated messages via three platforms: voice, email, and text messaging. SchoolReach, a subsidiary of GroupCast, is the nation’s leading parent notification service among private schools, and the fastest-growing communications service used by public schools. More information about GroupCast or SchoolReach can be found at www.groupcast.com and www.schoolreach.com or by calling 800-420-1479.