Fort McMurray Catholic Schools selected SchoolMessenger® as its unified communication system to send mass notifications to parents and staff for emergencies, incidents or other important events taking place in the schools or across the Division.
Mass notifications are referred as “Broadcasts” because of the massive number of destinations to which SchoolMessenger® can simultaneously deliver our messages. Available broadcast destinations include Phone, Email, SMS Text, Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds and Push Notifications.
Contact Information
Message recipients contact data for parents comes from the Maplewood® Student Information System (SIS) database. It includes parents, guardians and all other contacts such as those listed for as emergency contacts or babysitting. This data is updated every evening so that any changes to phone numbers, emails and contact preferences will be current on every broadcast. Parents are asked to contact their school administration office to verify their contact information to ensure the information is kept up to date.
The contact data for staff comes from the Division Human Resources System. Staff should review and update their contact information on eServe on a regular basis.
Text Messages
Under a federal law originally designed to protect consumers from telemarketers, we must get your permission to send messages to a mobile phone by voice call or SMS text. It’s also just a good idea, so that we’re sure the message is going to the right phone number for the right person. This permission only is needed for automated voice calls and texts. Permission isn’t necessary for other calls from the school, like you might get directly from a teacher, principal, or other staff member.
Please review the School Communications Consent – Parent/Guardian Q&A page for more information on this topic.
Opting-in or out of the SMS Text Message Service
An Opt-In invitation text was sent to all mobile phone numbers uploaded from our Student Information System (SIS) or from our Human Resources System (for staff). Recipients have to reply “Y” or “Yes” to the invitation text message to “Opt-in”.
If you did not receive the invitation text message or want to ensure your are registered, you can simply send a text message as follows:
To Opt-in: Text “Y” to 724665
Standard Text Message & Data rates may apply