Feature Story

August 16, 2006

By Jenny Carless, News@Cisco

Schools have long struggled to make sure parents get important information quickly and reliably.

From student progress reports to field trip reminders or notification of an absent student, traditional notification methods have included making many phone calls manually or putting notes in the children's backpacks. In recent years, that communication has expanded to Website postings or semi-automated outbound calling campaigns. The problem is that none of these methods is completely efficient, timely or effective.

Today, advanced networks with Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) applications offer schools an easy, cost-effective option for effective outbound communications.

Better Communication Means Better Results

Cisco Systems has long supported educational transformation, especially around using technology to increase administrative efficiencies and achieve academic excellence. As part of its efforts, Cisco recently announced a joint partnership with SchoolMessenger for an advanced automatic communication solution called the SchoolMessenger for Cisco® Unified Communications, which allows teachers and administrators to communicate with parents more regularly, helping to foster a stronger relationship with them.

The results of better school-to-family communication include more parental involvement, better student safety, less truancy and improved academic achievement for students.

Davis School District, located just north of Salt Lake City, is the third-largest district in Utah. It uses SchoolMessenger for Cisco Unified Communications in a variety of ways: individual schools use it to send specific messages about their events (such as PTA meetings or carnivals); each evening the district automatically calls the homes of every absent secondary student; and as a safety precaution, elementary schools also automatically call the home of each child who isn't at school one hour after schools starts.

Recently, the system helped find a missing child. "A fifth-grade student was reported missing to the police at 6 pm," explains Vickie Calder, customer service manager for the Davis IT department. "The police contacted the school, our secretary used SchoolMessenger to call all the fifth-grade families automatically, and the boy was found right away at a friend's house."

In addition to the safety factor, Davis School District has also noticed dramatic improvements in parent and community involvement: by sending messages about meetings and activities using SchoolMessenger for Cisco Unified Communications, attendance at these events has doubled, according to Calder.

"Recently, as part of our efforts to get a bond passed to build seven new schools, we used SchoolMessenger to send information to parents and employees," she adds. "And the bond passed!"

Addressing the Needs of Educators

"With Cisco's traditional network infrastructure and our advanced technologies, we make it easy for school administrators to take advantage of the many fantastic applications that are available to them today - from video streaming and enhanced voice services to automated parental notification," says Charles Fadel, global lead of education for Cisco.

"This is where our partners, like SchoolMessenger, come in," he continues. "In an education setting, effective, immediate communication is critical. Studies have demonstrated the importance of parental outreach programs and their beneficial effects on student achievement and attendance rates. It's about keeping the teacher and parents in touch, so parents know about assignments, and when their children aren't in school. The more students are in class, the better they do."

SchoolMessenger, the leading U.S. parental notification company, and Cisco have teamed up to create the SchoolMessenger for Cisco Unified Communications solution, which consists of Cisco Unified CallManager, Cisco IP phones and SchoolMessenger Communication Suite. With this application, teachers and administrators can easily record a personalized message, select a pre-programmed calling list and send a message to parents from a computer or IP phone. School principals can use it to address the entire school population effortlessly and in multiple languages.

"Take VoIP as an example: it's a great business tool, it provides attractive cost savings and there are many interesting VoIP applications, but in the educational market, it's still largely considered a 'nice to have'," she continues. "However, attendance and parent engagement are day-to-day pain points for these institutions; it's top of mind. By marrying the power of VoIP with SchoolMessenger, schools can address all of these top of mind pain points in an easy, cost-effective, efficient way - so then all of a sudden VoIP and SchoolMessenger become 'must haves'."

Reducing Truancy, Driving Parental Involvement

"In general, we see schools using SchoolMessenger for Cisco Unified Communications in two main ways: attendance and outreach to parents," explains Kent Lowry, president and CEO of SchoolMessenger. "At the high-school level, regular attendance reporting can help rein in truancy, and in elementary schools it's now recognized as an important safety issue to be able to notify parents immediately when their child is absent."

"SchoolMessenger can also drive attendance at important events, like back-to-school nights, when the school really wants to encourage parental involvement," he adds. "Our customers report dramatic increases in participation when they get these notices."

Some schools even come up with innovative ways to take advantage of the automatic calling system. "One school set up a 'tardy club,' whose members got a 6 am wake-up call," Lowry explains. "Once you were in the tardy club, you couldn't get out until you started showing up on time regularly. Apparently it was pretty effective," he says, smiling.

South Kitsap School District, serving more than 10,500 students on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington, has also seen impressive results from its use of SchoolMessenger for Cisco Unified Communications.

The system is helping with attendance issues, in particular. "It's integrated with our student information system, so every night, SchoolMessenger calls the homes of absent students and then gives a report to our attendance secretary," explains Derry Lyons, the district's director of Informational Technology Services.

"We particularly like the ability to customize messages," he says. "For families with more than one child, for example, a generic message that says 'your child was absent' isn't very helpful. We can send a message that specifies which child and which periods he or she missed."

School districts around the country are discovering the same benefits that Davis and South Kitsap are experiencing. With a reliable, advanced network infrastructure and applications like SchoolMessenger for Cisco Unified Communications, improved communications between parents and schools can deliver improved safety, better attendance, more parental involvement and increased academic achievement.

Jenny Carless is a freelance writer based in Santa Cruz, CA.