Family Communication

The Green Bay Area Public School District communicates with families in several ways.

• Mass communication to families through email, text and automated phones calls using School Messenger
• Text messages from teachers and schools can be through School Messenger or Talking Points

School Messenger

The Green Bay Area Public School District uses School Messenger’s notification system to communicate with families through automated phone calls, emails and text messages. Communications from the District or a school can range from school delays or cancellations, late buses, emergency situations, District and school announcements and newsletters, signing up for parent/teacher conferences, food service negative balances, attendance messages, and more. 

During the enrollment process or annual update, guardians will provide contact information and identify which individuals should receive general information or emergency notifications (inclement weather, school closures, emergency situations, etc.). By providing contact information, parents/guardians and emergency contacts agree to be contacted by phone, email and text.

Since School Messenger is a mass communication system, at any time, individuals are able to opt-out of receiving messages. Every School Messenger email does include an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email. To stop receiving text messages, individuals only need to text “STOP” to 67587 or opt-out online at http://schoolmessenger.com/tm, scroll to the bottom and fill out the unsubscribe form. However, the system does not distinguish between opting out of general messages vs. emergency notifications. Once an individual unsubscribes from an email, or opts-out of receiving text messages, they will no longer receive any messages from GBAPS or their child’s school in that format, including school closures or emergency messages. 

How to Determine who Receives which Kinds of Information

When enrolling or updating contact information at the beginning of the school year, families can determine who should receive notifications from the District.  

• Guardians: These individuals are parents/guardians who have been verified by using the child’s birth certificate and are able to legally receive pupil record information (e.g., attendance, school fees, low/negative food service balances, etc.)
• Parents: These individuals are parents who have not been verified using the child’s birth certificate and will receive school and District communication, such as school or District announcements (e.g., sign up for parent/teacher conferences, upcoming events, graduation information), surveys, newsletters, etc.
• Emergency: These are individuals who the parent/guardian would like to be contacted in the following situations - “secure the building,” school closing/delay/early release due to inclement weather, and/or other emergency, such as school being closed due to flooding, etc. 

Students Can Receive Text Messages for Emergency Situations

When enrolling or updating contact information, parents/guardians can provide their 6th-12th grade student’s cell phone number. Students will receive messages for the following:

• Emergency situations
  • School closures/delays or early releases due to inclement weather
  • Secure the building messages to inform students who may be traveling between schools, arriving late due to an appointment, are off-campus for lunch, etc. 
  • District or school-wide technology failures (e.g., Google not working, etc.)

TalkingPoints

TalkingPoints is a two-way multilingual family engagement platform that allows staff and school administrators to easily communicate with families in more than 100 languages via text messages. The teacher or administrator is able to send a text message to a parent/guardian and, if needed, TalkingPoints will translate the language to the preferred language identified in Infinite Campus. Likewise, the parent/guardian can text back to the teacher/administrator in their preferred language and TalkingPoints will translate to English.  

For parents/guardians who may have concerns regarding receiving text messages, perhaps due to not having an unlimited texting plan, TalkingPoints has developed an optional, and free, Parent Mobile Application which parents/guardians can use to receive messages, and bypass the texts. The Parent Mobile Application is available for download on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.

Similar to email, teachers/administrators will be expected to respond in a reasonable amount of time to parent/guardian texts during normal school hours. Expectations for staff responses to texts received outside of normal school hours is that they may wait to respond until the following school day, unless the message is an emergency. 

If a parent/guardian does not wish for teachers or administrators to communicate with them using TalkingPoints, they should respond to the text message with “goodbye.”

How to change notification settings in TalkingPoints