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Danvers schools roll out InformaCast emergency alert system to speed building notifications
Summary
District technology staff described a year‑long effort to implement InformaCast, a mass notification system that sends synchronized intercom, phone, text and app alerts to staff and can be scoped school‑by‑school or district‑wide; parents’ notification protocol will be addressed in a later phase.
Danvers Public Schools presented a new mass notification system intended to speed emergency communications to staff and emergency services across school buildings.
Jim Sullivan, the district’s director of technology, said the InformaCast system was developed during a year of work with the district safety committee and integrates with phones, intercoms, staff email and a mobile app so authorized users can “launch an alert to notify the school community where the issue is, as well as emergency services” within seconds.
Sullivan described the system’s multi‑channel approach: an audio announcement over classroom intercoms, a visual message on classroom phones, emails and text messages to staff, and push notifications to the InformaCast mobile app. He said the app can override phone silent settings, similar to an AMBER alert, and that future work may enable the district to push messages to classroom displays and building digital signage.
Sullivan said authorized launchers will include building principals, district administrators and the police department; principals can trigger an alert from a mobile device. The committee asked whether alerts could be targeted to multiple schools; Sullivan said district administrators and the police can choose single schools or sets of schools depending on the incident.
Committee members raised questions about parent notifications and the risk of parents rushing to a scene. Sullivan said the district’s safety committee will develop a phase‑two plan for parent messaging and that phase two would consider secondary messages with more guidance for families.
Sullivan said the technology team has tested the system after school in most buildings and received generally positive staff feedback; issues reported so far were operational (missing a text, a speaker volume) rather than design concerns. He said student testing has been limited because tests were run after school; the district notifies building occupants in advance of any tests.
The district plans to continue refining response options (for example, reply options that allow staff to indicate “I need help”) and to work with the safety committee on consistent messaging protocols.
