School Messenger Offers New Services to Parents

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Garden County Schools utilizes the School Messenger notification service, an automated communication system, to send important information to families within the district.

Beginning in January 2010, two new services were offered to parents of Garden County School students.  The first allowed parents to control and/or revise their personal contact information.  Currently, phone numbers and e-mail addresses are uploaded from the school’s student information system, PowerSchool, into the School Messenger database.  If parents wish to personally edit, delete, or add to this contact information, they will be able to do so through a secure web portal with their own username and password.  Letters were sent with the second quarter report cards explaining how to access and use the Contact Manager web portal.

School Messenger also added text messaging to its services.  To comply with wireless carrier requirements and protect against unsolicited text messages, parents will receive an SMS message to the wireless cell phone number that the district has on file requesting that they “opt in” in order to receive important information from the district via SMS text message.

The message will be similar to the following:

“Garden County Schools alerts.  Reply Y for aprx 5 msgs/mo.  Txt HELP 4 info.  Msg&data rates may apply.  Visit schoolmessenger.com/tm”

So that you can continue to receive these important messages from your student’s school district, we encourage you to reply with Y or Yes or OPTIN when you receive such a verification message. 

To opt out of all text messages from School Messenger, visit http://www.schoolmessenger.com/txtmsg/ or reply with STOP to the opt-in message that you receive.

(The school district does not pay for text message charges that may be incurred by you for sending or receiving text messages.  Check with your wireless carrier for possible charges.)