Notification program added in District 518

• District 518

District 518

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WORTHINGTON — Winter weather worries will no longer mean an onslaught of phone calls for receptionists in District 518.

Thanks to an automated program called Shoutpoint Campus Messenger, students, staff and parents will receive an e-mail or phone call informing them of school closings or late starts.

In a system test conducted last week with faculty and staff, Shoutpoint was able to call 356 phone numbers in four minutes.

The program works in conjunction with Infinite Campus, the district’s current student record management system.

“The fact that it’s integrated into our database is a real key,” said Tom Ahlberg, an information technology staff member in the district.

Parents and students can already use the Infinite Campus system to access attendance records and grades online. In the future, faculty and staff will use Shoutpoint for any number of school-related announcements — but for now, Ahlberg said, the district will start slowly, likely using the program only for school closing announcements until the end of this school year.

“We don’t want to get people tone deaf, so we don’t call about everything,” he explained.

Eventually, teachers could use the system to inform parents of upcoming field trips, missing assignments or behavior problems; while coaches could inform athletes of game cancellations or let parents know that buses are running late.

“If a child is marked absent and the parent hasn’t called in, we can set it to call parents at say, 10 o’clock and say ‘Your child was marked absent, please call the school,’” explained Diane Standafer, another IT staff member.

The system allows users to define a narrow recipient list: all fifth-grade boys’ basketball players, or all high school students taller than 6 feet, for example.

Any parent who is currently registered with Parent Campus Portal, the district’s resource for parents, should receive messages when they are sent, and can edit their preferences to receive messages at their home, cellular or work phone numbers or via e-mail. Those who are not using the portal system may sign up on the district’s Web site at www.isd518.net/Parents.htm.

Ahlberg said parents who are signed up but do not receive messages once the district begins transmitting them should contact their child’s school.

The system works by allowing users to enter text in the system and an automated voice then reads that text to call recipients. Standafer said users can also upload their own WAV files, which will allow messages to be translated into Spanish, Burmese and Karen for non-English speakers.

The Shoutpoint system comes at a total cost of about $8,000 for the district, though some of that may be refunded through federal e-rate funding, which supports technology initiatives in schools and libraries.

Tags: district 518, news, education, worthington, shoutpoint