Moore County Schools officials told the school board on Aug. 12 that the district will transition its mass-notification service and district/school websites to products from SchoolMessenger, moving from the current ConnectED system to SchoolMessenger’s Communicate and the Presence web platform in early September.

District communications staff said the change follows expiration of the previous contract and aims to consolidate services, streamline site maintenance and integrate directly with PowerSchool. Catherine Murphy and another district presenter described faster editing tools, built-in translation, ADA compliance and direct bus-route messaging as key benefits.

“The school messenger service ... it replaces what is now referred to as ConnectED,” Murphy said, adding the service is branded “Communicate.” She said the platform provides near-instant reports showing which calls and emails were delivered and which failed, down to the individual contact level, which staff can use to identify and correct contact-data errors.

District presenters said the new system will integrate with transportation so schools and transportation staff can send bus-route alerts directly to affected families, and that PowerSchool integration will let administrators target messages to grades or groups (for example, “send to sixth grade”). The district said the contact database pulls nightly from PowerSchool and that the system already contains about 14,000 individual contacts and more than 50,000 phone numbers.

Presenters said the web platform, Presence, uses a standard template adopted by many U.S. districts, offers consistent site navigation across schools, supports calendar sync (including automatic athletic-calendar subscriptions) and automatic translation tools. Laura Mae demonstrated the site layout the board saw during the meeting.

Murphy said the district migrated to the vendor on July 1 for testing and that staff have been working through delivery issues such as spam warnings and rerouting. She said the vendor offers 24/7 support for district and school users and unlimited training for school webmasters.

The district estimated a modest cost reduction from the contract consolidation, telling the board the change saves about $4,000 over three years. Murphy also said implementation carried some costs and that the district expects staff-time savings and easier content maintenance to increase net benefits over time.

The district is providing school-based webmasters with a demo site now and plans an early-September public launch so schools can begin the new year on the new platform. Ecklund and Murphy said the Android app will require parents to download an updated version from Google Play while the iOS app will update automatically.

Questions at the meeting addressed whether teachers could have individual pages (technically possible but not a current priority) and how emergency messages can reach multiple phone numbers (the system supports emergency blasts to multiple numbers per contact).