Coordinating its implementation with a new student information system and student database, the Mexico Public School District will install the SchoolReach messaging system during the upcoming school year, stated Assistant Superintendent Kevin Freeman.

"It's really nice for snow cancellations, and any of those other kinds of announcements that need to go out to everybody," summarized Freeman of  the product, developed and marketed by GroupCast Messaging Systems of St. Louis. Due to the corresponding information system installation process, he added that SchoolReach will not be in place at the start of the district's 2008-2009 school year, which begins Aug. 20. But the assistant superintendent noted, "It will be in place later in the fall, especially with the advent of inclement winter weather."

Specifically, SchoolReach allows a school official, such as a principal, to record a brief message. Then, the centrally-recorded voice or text message can be delivered simultaneously to tens, hundreds or thousands of phone numbers from a specified list. According to the GroupCast firm, the entire process transpires within just a few minutes.
"Actually, we used it at Van-Far, when I was over there," stated Freeman, a former superintendent at Van-Far R-1 School District. "And we got really positive feedback from everybody."

He added: "If you spend a little time with it, you can target it down just about to individual sports teams. Now I don't know that we'll do that, to that extent, because that takes a little bit of time. We're looking more at the general school population in terms of taking care of snow cancellations, other school cancellations, and any kind of emergencies that may develop."

"Schools struggle with day-of or night-before notices to parents," stated Paul Langhorst, vice president of operations for the GroupCast firm, adding that hardware, software and/or phone line upgrades are not required of message recipients. "SchoolReach allows a school administrator to more effectively and efficiently contact parents with important announcements."

While the program is ideally suited for mass, efficient school cancellation notices, the program can similarly be used for rumor abatement. Conversely, it can be used to notify parents, the student body, and proper officials of a developing emergency situation.

"There was a situation in St. Louis a couple years ago when they had somebody sitting out in the parking lot with a gun, a rifle, at one of those St. Louis schools," noted Freeman. "And they had this system, and they were able to almost instantly notify everybody what was going on, and what they needed the parents to do. They felt like it was a huge tool in that emergency situation. So we're looking at it from that standpoint – emergency situations and cancellations. We think it will be a very big benefit for us."
In addition, the assistant superintendent cited another useful feature of the program: it generates information regarding unsuccessful calls.

"I could make that phone call from home on my phone, and then get on my computer later and log-in and see how many calls were successful, and then how many calls didn't pick up. Then you get a generated list of bad numbers, which allows you to clean up your phone lists very quickly. The first couple of times we use this, we'll probably get a bunch of phone calls from people wanting to know why in the world we're calling them. 'I don't have a kid in school. Why are you calling me?' Well it's because somewhere in the process, we got a wrong phone number or a bad phone number, or somebody's phone number changed, and that never got corrected. So it's really nice to clean all that up, and feel like you have better communication."

Earlier this year, following a sanctioning vote from the Mexico Board of Education, Mexico Public Schools entered into the contract agreement with GroupCast to implement the service, which is renewable on an annual basis. Freeman said initial cost of the SchoolReach system is approximately $6,000, with the cost adjusted downward in subsequent years.

"There is a set-up cost, and then a price-per-kid after that, with (future) annual cost less than that $6,000," he said. "But this is very efficient, and allows us to have a lot more effective communication. We think it is a reasonable price for what it does for you."