Quick communication with parents during a weather emergency or a security threat is a vital concern for school districts, but older telephone-dialing systems and even mass e-mails can all fail to connect.
A recent improvement puts into parents鈥� hands the ability to set鈥攁nd modify鈥攖heir communications preferences on a Web site. That tack is used both by an alert service provided by the Honeywell Corp. and a home-grown system in a Mississippi school district.
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The 340-student Harding Township schools in Morris County, N.J., subscribes to Honeywell鈥檚 Instant Alert, a managed service that relays messages from designated school officials for both emergency and nonemergency purposes.
Mary Jane Canose, the school district鈥檚 business manager, said the message goes out much faster than with the district鈥檚 old auto-dial system, which 鈥渨as so slow and cumbersome, and if one person is away, it messes up the whole chain.鈥�
Now, the superintendent or other designated official e-mails a text message to the service, which automatically converts it to a computerized female voice鈥攎eant to convey calmness in a crisis鈥攁nd sends it simultaneously to the phone numbers that parents have indicated. The text message is also blasted to e-mail addresses and pagers. Alerts are color-coded based on their urgency; parents can designate different contact information for different colors.
The district pays $3,000 annually for the service, said Ms. Canose.
On Mississippi鈥檚 Gulf Coast, the 2,500-student Lincoln County district has a message system that follows similar principles at practically no cost.
In September, when Hurricane Ivan threatened the Gulf Coast, Patrick Brown, the information-technology director, stayed up a few nights and built an alert system using free 鈥渙pen source鈥� programming tools. The only significant cost was his time, he said.
As with the Honeywell system, users can go to the district鈥檚 Web site and type in their phone numbers and the names of their phone or Internet service providers.
The Lincoln County system doesn鈥檛 deliver voice messages, but it sends e-mails and text messages to cellphones and pagers as well as e-mail accounts. The messages are also color-coded to show their degree of urgency.
So far, the district has used the system three times: to warn of school closings because of a tornado and hurricanes, Mr. Brown said.
