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| SchoolConnects Enables Schools and Districts to: |
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Provide effective & secure 2-way communication |
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Save time and money |
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Communicate with parents AND students |
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Reduce tardiness, absenteeism and dropouts |
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Substantiate School Communication Efforts |
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Take the pulse of the community regularly |
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Enhance Student Safety |
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Reach out to parents from different ethnic groups |
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Bridge the "Digital Divide" |
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Maintain the personal touch |
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| As an interactive communication tool, SchoolConnects can deliver much more than the usual daily attendance and occasional school-wide messages to parents, students and staff. |
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Principals can
use SchoolConnects to deliver personal messages in their own voices to parents and conduct automated surveys with little effort. Teachers can push out information to parents and students in specific grades and classes. Counselors and social workers can
use SchoolConnects to communicate with parents of students requiring special attention. Librarians can
use the system to collect overdue library items and fines.
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| Effective and Secure |
Delivering school messages by phone and e-mail has proven to be more effective in reaching parents than printed notices taken home by students. Young children have a tendency to lose the notices on the way home. Even when the notices do make it home, parents don’t often receive them in a timely manner. Some older students may even deliberately avoid giving their parents school notices.
In situations where printed notices need to be delivered by students to their parents, a reminder phone call or e-mail to the parents will help ensure that parents ask their children for the notices. With more and more parents using cellular phones and e-mail, SchoolConnects provides an increasingly effective and secure way to communicate with all parents.
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| 2-Way Communication Channels |
SchoolConnects' interactive response capability provides a 2-way communication channel that allows parents to respond to the messages using the telephone keypad or voice. For example, a parent receiving an absence call can be asked to select a reason for the absence by pressing a key on the telephone or by leaving a voice message. Parents' responses can be easily viewed on screen or listened to over the phone. Parents who want to avoid message interception by their children can be issued a PINs that can be used to confirm receipt of messages or ensure only the intended recipient hears the messages.
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| Save Time and Money |
SchoolConnects frees up teachers and office staff from routine communication work and allows them to focus their attention on matters that require their personal attention. No more spending hour after hour making repetitive phone calls. No longer will school staff need to print, collate and distribute notices to each class. SchoolConnects will save you a bundle on postage. It can also help recover unreturned library items, textbooks, musical instruments and athletic equipment to generate further savings for schools. With SchoolConnects, teachers will need to spend less class time distributing school notices and reminders for students to take home and devote more time to learning.
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| Communicate with Parents and Students |
Not only is SchoolConnects effective for delivering notices and reminders to parents, it is also useful for communicating with students. For example, a time change in band practice can be sent to all band members quickly by phone and e-mail. A reminder by a teacher to bring certain materials to class can be sent to students the evening before.
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| Reduce Tardiness, Absenteeism and Dropouts |
Prompt notification to parents has proved to be very effective in reducing tardiness and absenteeism. Schools have reported a substantial decrease on both counts after implementing SchoolConnects, resulting in reduced dropout rate in the longer run.
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| Substantiate School Efforts to Communicate |
As much as SchoolConnects can help enhance communication with parents and students, some parents still question why the school did not notify them earlier. Reports can be easily generated listing the history of all phone calls and messages sent to a specific household to substantiate the effort made by the school to communicate with the parents.
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| Take the Pulse of the Community |
| The PowerSurvey module enables schools and districts to conduct response driven, multi-question opinion surveys easily, efficiently and without cost. It helps school and district administrators gauge the acceptance of new programs and initiatives before implementing them. Collected data can be easily exported for analysis with no costly data entry work associated with traditional paper based surveys. |
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| Enhance Student Safety |
The TipLine module allows students to report on bullying, weapons and drugs. To let students feel more comfortable providing tips, SchoolConnects mask the identity of the caller by digitally transforming their voice through a random, irreversible process.
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| Reach out to Different Ethnic Communities |
To help schools serve parents from diverse ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, SchoolConnects can deliver messages to them in their own preferred language.
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| Bridge the "Digital Divide" |
As much as e-mail is fast becoming the preferred mode of communication, there are still many parents who do not have ready access to the Internet. SchoolConnects' capability of delivering messages by phone and e-mail allows schools to provide the same service level equitably to all parents on both sides of the "Digital Divide". 
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