Bay City Tribune

Bay City ISD has implemented new communication strategies that can deliver voice, e-mail and text messages to parents and staff via our new partnership with School Messenger.

The campuses can now easily send messages to reach virtually any device including mobile phones, landline phones, Cisco IP phones, pagers, PDAs, Blackberries, e-mail and more.

The new messaging system also can translate English messages into more than 30 other languages.

According to BCISD Superintendent Keith Brown, the district is always looking for new and better ways to keep families informed.

"Not everyone has access at home or work to our district website, and sometimes its necessary to get out information instantly. Our new messaging system will allow us to get families the information they need wherever they are. We want to keep parents aware and informed about their children and whats going on in our schools. And as we all know, parental involvement is a huge factor in the academic success of our students."

The messaging system can be utilized to inform parents of student attendance, truancy, student food account balances, emergency notifications, meetings, events and a host of other uses.

An essential tool to increase efficiency, the new messaging system will help parents, staff and students feel well-informed and connected.

Specifically, the district expects to positively affect parental involvement, as informed parents become engaged parents; reduce absenteeism and therefore lower the dropout rate; lower or eliminate negative food account balances; spread emergency notifications to thousands in minutes; and collect input from parents and staff for better decision-making via surveys.

BCISD looks to increase staff efficiency because less time will have to be spent on attendance record keeping, which in turn will save the district dollars. The messaging system will additionally report phone numbers that need to be updated, and will make it easier for parents to handle food account balances and get this out of the students' hands.

Students can expect to find speedier lunch lines, too.

Tenie Holmes Elementary Principal Jessica Estlinbaum has already used the system a couple of times.

"I see the great potential of this system. It's another great communication tool for parent communication," she said.

Bay City Junior High Principal Brandon Hood utilized School Messenger after a fire in the school library at the end of the last school year, and Heath Koenig, Bay City Intermediate Principal, says "It is great. I love it. We will need parents to keep their information updated for the system to be most effective."

"Perhaps most importantly, we hope our new communication system will give parents greater peace of mind as they can feel confident that they will get immediate notification of any emergency situations, changes in schedules, and all those issues of which our families are concerned," Brown said.