Mesa County Valley School District 51
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Stories from the Front Page

8/8/14

Receive emergency alerts on your cell phone

Parents,

District 51 has invested in a district-wide communication system (called SchoolConnects) that will allow all schools and the district to contact you regarding important news, events, and emergency or safety-related situations.

Schools and the district can only send texts to phones who have subscribed to receive the messages. If you want to receive SMS text messages from the school or district, you must first do the following:

  • Ensure that your child’s school has your cell phone listed in the student database under “Mobile”.
  • From the SMS-capable telephone where you want to receive the text messages, text the word Join to the number 56360. If our messaging system finds a match for your phone number in its database, you receive a confirmation message thanking you for joining school alerts. If our messaging system does not find a match for your phone number in its database, you will receive a message that the number could not be found, and then you should contact the school to add the number to the school’s Student Management System. After your number has been added, wait at least 24 hours, and then text Join again. At any time, you can unsubscribe by texting Stop (in Canada, you can also text Arret) to 56360.
  • Create a contact on your phone with the name of your school or school district, or another meaningful name, and the phone number 56360. Then, when you receive a text from this number, you know who is sending it.

 

At this point in time, the District will only contact parents in the case of an emergency or safety-related situations. The District will reach out to parents using phone, text and email or a combination. Parents and the community can also check the district website (www.d51schools.org) or social media accounts (facebook.com/schooldistrict51 and twitter.com/district51) for emergency alerts and updates as well as general news.

In order to receive the quickest and most accurate information in an emergency situation, parents need to be sure that all home phone, cell phone and email addresses are up-to-date in the student information system, Synergy. Contact the school office if you have any questions. The texts, calls and emails will only go to those families who have those fields filled in in the database.

Should you have any questions about this new service or other emergency communications, don’t hesitate to call the communications office at 254-5112 or Tim Leon in Safety at 254-5100.

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