LHRIC Partners with K12 Alerts and Connect-ED

The Lower Hudson Regional Information Center has signed on with K12 Alerts® and Connect-ED®, services that pick up where people leave off. Within seconds, administrators can send emergency messages about snow days, emergency closings, power outages, lockdowns and other events to parents and staff though work and home emails, land
lines, and text messages to cell phones. If no one is immediately available, the systems will also leave phone messages.

Chances are districts will be able to reach parents no matter where they are, because they’ll be able to
update their contact information 24 hours a day, seven days a week, even when they are away from their usual numbers.

"The responsibility lies with the parents to update their information, taking the administrative burden off the school," said Gregory Bender, president and CEO of K12 Alerts of White Plains.

Administrators sign on with their message, and the K-12 Alerts and Connect-ED web browsers does the rest, sending messages to about 2000 parents in under 20 seconds. K12 Alerts also provides Electronic Student Emergency Cards that parents must update and teachers can access in a few keystrokes, providing allergy and other information about
each child. The information and the ability to change it can only be accessed by individuals who are authorized with a student ID number and password.

That system is currently in use in Nanuet, Ardsley, Hastings, Irvington, Eastchester, Chappaqua, Pleasantville, Pocantico Hills, Tarrytown and other districts. By partnering with the LHRIC, districts that sign up for the service can do so at the consortium’s rates.

The Connect-ED® service enables school administrators to record, schedule, send, and track personalized voice messages to tens of thousands of students, parents, and staff in minutes. The NTI Group Inc. has developed the Connect-ED system built for K-12 educators, who can use automated communication through a Connect-ED hosted, mass notification engine. The service offers a bundled set of emergency communication, survey, and community outreach notification tools designed to help schools at all levels improve awareness, increase involvement, and audit communication on a regular basis.

With Connect-ED, the user (in most cases, the superintendent) records a phone message, selects the recipients, and then sends that message through a variety of means that can include phone message machines, voice mail, PDAs, email alerts, and text messaging.