The district uses AlertNow as the parent notification system. This tool is used to notify parents, faculty, staff, and other key members of the school communty in the event of an emergency or other district-wide message. This system works with our student database, Infinite Campus and doesn't require any sign up by parents. Contact phone numbers and/or email addresses will be taken from Infinite Campus data. The high school and middle school also use AlertNow for attendance calls.
General Questions and Answers
Q1. When will AlertNow be activated/begin?
A. The district began using AlertNow in May 2010.
Q2. What if I’m the primary residence for my child and we do not have a home land line?
A. If there is no number listed as the home phone number then calls made for general notification (late start, no school, school messages, etc.) will not be placed for that student. To ensure you get calls, please put a number where you would like to receive calls. For many people this will be their cell phone. So decide what number you would like those calls to go to and put that in as your home phone number.
Q3. What are considered general notifications?
A. This will be used for late start and school cancellation and other important district information for the school community such as reminders about parent/teacher conferences, report card distribution, registration information, cancellations of events, building newsletters, school events, attendance, etc.
This call will go to-
the primary household number (home phone of house where student lives); and
the secondary household number if there is a secondary household
It is important to have the primary number be one that someone will answer or check messages for and that will know what to do with the information in the event of a weather related message or other type of message sent to parents and staff members. (Back to top)
Q4. What are considered emergency notifications?
A. This is a more important message that we hope will not be used often. It would be used when school is dismissed early or if there are other immediate health/safety/emergency situations.
This call will go to-
the primary home-household number, up to two parent/guardian cell phone and work numbers
the secondary household-household number and up to two parent/guardian cell phone numbers
Q5. How are notifications made?
A. In the event of a General Notification or Emergency Notification message, district superintendent, Clay Guthmiller, or someone designated by Mr. Guthmiller, creates a voice message and/or an email message, which is sent to families' contact information. Contact information includes phone numbers and email addresses. The contact information used by the district comes from the student information system, Infinite Campus.
The calls and emails are sent simultaneously to the intended audience; parent, staff, or both depending on the situation. Generally a message sent to parents is also sent to staff. If the messages are sent separately to the two groups, then staff members that are also parents might receive two calls or messages. (Back to top)
Q6. What will my caller ID display?
A. The caller ID will display the school’s main number when general announcements are delivered. The caller ID will display 411 if the message is an emergency.
Q7. What if I am not contacted?
A. If you do NOT get contacted and feel you should have received a message you should first check for any sent messages to your phone number and/or email address. This can be done by going to www.alertnowmessage.com and entering in your phone number or email address that is supposed to receive messages. If any messages were sent to that number or email address, they would appear there.
If you are not receiving email messages, please check your spam/junk mail folder. If your email is a work email, you may want to check with your technology department to see if the email provider is allowing emails from our notification system to go through or not. Click here for whitelist information that your technology department may need for allowing emails to come through to you. Some email providers for personal accounts allow the individual to set their level of spam control and you may need to adjust that to allow emails from AlertNow/Blackboard to come through to you.
You should only contact the school office if you feel you have missed a call or email and nothing is showing on the message website.
Q8. What is the Parent Portal?
A. At this time we have not activated the parent portal. More information will be sent out when this access is to become available. This tool will provide some added flexibility for general notifications. (Back to top)
Q9. When will you notify by phone versus email?
A. Probably the quickest way to contact people is using phone contacts. At times, only an email message may be sent as a reminder for specific school related topics. There may also be times when both phone calls and email messages are sent to help ensure that parents are reached. These would be for emergency type situations and if school is to be dismissed early.
Q10. Can AlertNow send Text Messages?
A. AlertNow does have the ability to send text messages. The district is exploring that option and information will be sent out whenever that option becomes available to parents. (Back to top)
Q11. How can I get calls at my work number?
A. Work phone numbers are important numbers for school offices to have to reach parents should their child be sick or for other school needs. The district plans to use the work number of the primary contact in the house where the student resides for emergency calls only.
Please note that it is best to have a direct line listed for your work number or to include an extension. Under those two situations, the calls should go directly to the individual the district is trying to reach.
Should your work number be one that is universal for your department or business, then the receptionist would get the message and there is no indication of to whom that call should be given. So please be aware and make your office aware that calls may come that indicate something is occurring at the JCSD. The message may not reach you as the receptionist may not know who that call/message should be given to or that there might be several people that should receive it.
We want and need to have your work number in Infinite Campus and thus those calls in an emergency situation will be sent. It is understood that this may be somewhat annoying but in an emergency situation we feel that calls need to go out to the place of work. The message should provide enough information to know if the message is district-wide or specific to one building. AlertNow will only call one number and so your company should not worry about multiple calls. (Example: There are 25 people that work together and all have the same work number. The system will only place one call to that unique number and 25 separate calls should not be received). (Back to top)
Q12. What if I move or change phone numbers or my email address changes?
A. Contact the building secretary of your student(s) as mentioned above as soon as you have the new information.
Q13. AlertNow hung up before I heard the message. What should I do?
A. AlertNow utilizes the industry’s most Advanced Answering Machine Detection (AAMD) software. The system starts the broadcast immediately upon telephone pickup;
simultaneously, it is listening for interruptions. If the system is not interrupted by noise or someone speaking within the first 3.5 seconds, the message is delivered. If the system detects a greeting longer than a few seconds, the system treats this as an outgoing message from an answering machine and will stop playing, wait for silence (usually after the beep), and then start the message over so that it can be recorded in its entirety.
While the software is 98% accurate in distinguishing live vs. machine, errors can occur if the person repeatedly says “hello” or answers in a noisy environment (i.e. traffic, children playing, loud music or television, dog barking, etc.). Generally in these situations, the system stops playing the message. It is waiting for silence to start the message over. In a noisy environment, where silence is unattainable, call recipients can press the number 1 on their telephone and the message will play from the beginning
without interruption. You can also go to www.alertnowmessage.com and enter in your phone number and retrieve any messages online. (Back to top)
Q14. What if the line is busy or there is no answer?
A. The AlertNow system will make up to four attempts to reach each number, with three minutes in between each call. If the message is not delivered by the fourth attempt, the school is notified of such in the delivery report.
Q15. Why is my answering machine recording only half of the message?
A. If the answering machine greeting is sporadic with various periods of silence or does not start playing within 3 seconds, the system may read this as a live person and begin playing the message before the machine has started recording. This will result in a recording of silence (if the AlertNow message finishes playing before the machine begins recording) or of just the last portion of the AlertNow message. Parents can simply re-record their outgoing message so that there are no pauses.
Alternately, if the answering machine is set to record for a specific amount of time (e.g., 30 seconds) and the AlertNow message runs longer than that, this will also result in message cut-off. The recommended solution is to have parents set their machines to record for a longer period. For answering machines or voicemail systems where it is necessary to enter a mailbox number, AlertNow is unable to leave a message. (Back to top)
Q16. My caller ID showed that the school had called, but there was no voicemail. Why?
A. The system will ring a line up to six times. If your answering machine is set to pick up on seven or more rings, the message may not be delivered to your machine. Therefore, we encourage you to set your machine to six rings or fewer. Another possibility is that there is a break or a substantial silence in your machine’s outgoing message, causing the AlertNow message to play prior to the machine actually recording. Please make sure that the greeting is seamless to facilitate successful message delivery.
Q17. Why doesn’t the school’s name and/or phone number appear on the caller ID?
A. AlertNow passes the caller ID information to the local telephone carriers, but it is up to those carriers to pass it along to their customers. Furthermore, different local telephone companies process caller ID information differently. Some provide the name associated with the number, while others do not. For example, a telephone company may require an individual to subscribe to “Advanced Caller ID” in order to receive the school name along with the phone number. Unfortunately, we have no control over this feature.
Q18. Will the system call phone numbers with extensions?
A. The AlertNow system is capable of dialing extensions, but we cannot guarantee the success of such a call. First of all, strict rules must be followed when entering the number in the AlertNow system. It must be formatted as ten digits, a space, a lower case x, then the extension number. Secondly, if the phone system on the recipient’s end requires menu navigation (such as, “Press 1 if you know your party’s extension”) AlertNow will not be able to deliver the call.
Q19. I have a telemarketer screening device or service. How will that affect the call?
A. Devices such as TeleZapper and services from the phone company such as Privacy Manager or Privacy Director are specifically designed to prevent “unknown” calls from progressing to the customer’s phone. Unless the district has chosen otherwise, emergency calls launched through AlertNow display 411-000-0000 on the caller ID, which is a non-standard, “unknown” number, triggering most privacy manager services.
AlertNow’s software is designed to distinguish between a live answer and an answering machine, not to navigate though privacy management services. Parents can contact their phone company and request that 411-000-000 be added to their list of allowed
callers. (Back to top)
PLEASE READ AND ABIDE BY THE FOLLOWING:
THE FOLLOWING DOCUMENT, AND INFORMATION CONTAINED HEREIN MAY INCLUDE PRIVILEGED INFORMATION FROM SAF-T-NET THAT IS CONFIDENTIAL AND MAY BE PROTECTED UNDER FEDERAL AND/OR STATE LAW. THIS INFORMATION IS INTENDED TO BE FOR THE USE OF SAF-TNETCUSTOMERS ONLY. THE IMPROPER USE, DISTRIBUTION, DISSEMINATION, OR COPYING IS PROHIBITED BY LAW – THE SAF-T-NET SECURITY TEAM - 2007.
