Do you hate to be bothered by those annoying recorded phone solicitations during the middle of dinner?  Yeah, so do I.  However, I hope you didn’t mind receiving the recorded call we delivered yesterday to remind you about the PTA Open House meeting.  If you didn’t get the call, you may want to check with Ms. White in the office to verify that we have a current phone number on file for you.

We have received a one-year grant allowing us to use the Alertify service, which is a system that delivers phone messages.  The grant actually specifies that we need to use the service for emergency situations, such as early school dismissal or to notify parents (or a subset of parents, such as a particular grade level) about a crisis.  However, the rep that is working with us said it was fine to use occasionally for other things, such as PTA notifications.  For a fee, approximately $1 per student, we could subscribe to the service to use for as many events as we want.

The service will also deliver email messages and SMS messages to cell phones but we’re not set-up for that at this time.  I’m interested in knowing your perception of the service.  Do you think phone reminders about events (and emergency notifications) is helpful or more of a nuisance?