Our elementary school purchased a system like this last year. We purchased it from a company called School Messenger. We bought a two line system which cost about $4ooo. With two lines and 575 students we can send the calls in two days. The system does cost about 350-400 a year to maintain and also needs a trained person to run it. At our school we have one parent .who is trained and they run it and the principal says the message. We try not to overuse it though. It is helpful to remind parents of conferences, testing period, etc We also use it by running a list of a certain committee to get just a handful of people a message
Our district is looking into using this for a broadcast message for when school is closed or we have a delayed opening for inclement weather. It's better than having the parent phone chain. You can have 5000 calls go out within minutes which is fantastic.
They are looking into a service since they don't have so much of a need to purchase the system themselves. If I find a name, I'll come back and post it, but it's a great system to check into.
our pto is considering funding an automated phone dialer system for our school. was wondering if anyone has any information or experience to share - system in house vs. subscription service.
