In an effort to improve communications between parents and school, Van Buren County Schools has partnered with Thrillshare, a telephone broadcast system that enables school personnel to notify all households and parents by phone voice message or standard text message within minutes of an emergency or unplanned event that causes early dismissal, school cancellation or late start. We will continue to report school closings due to snow or weather on the local TV stations, district website, and district social media pages and will use this system as an overlay to those public announcements.

When used, the service will simultaneously call all listed phone numbers in our parent contact list and will deliver a recorded message and/or text message notification from a school administrator. The service will deliver the message to both live answer and answering machines. No answers and busy signals will be automatically retried twice in 15 minute intervals after the initial call.

NOTE:

1. This requires NO registration by the parent other than completing the annual registration paperwork given to your student at the beginning of the school year. You must include the phone numbers that you wish to receive the alerts.

2. To be included in this service, it is imperative that you let your school know any changes in your phone number.

3. All information and contact numbers are strictly secure and confidential and are only used for the purposes described herein.

Parents will be notified in the event of an emergency closing during school hours. In the event that students would be dismissed early due to an emergency, students should know where to go if parents are not home.

FAMILY/STUDENT PHONE MESSAGE ENROLLMENT FORM

OPT-OUT AND PHONE NUMBER REMOVAL FORM

OPT-OUT OR REMOVAL OF PHONE NUMBERS FROM NOTIFICATION SYSTEM

The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) was created by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1991. The rules, among other things, prohibit calls made using automatic telephone dialing equipment or a prerecorded message to any telephone number assigned to a cell phone or any service for which the called party is charged for the call without prior express consent. The FCC met in June 2015 TCPA. The ruling approved at this meeting reiterated the need for callers to ensure they have the consent of the current subscriber of the number being called.