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Instant Parent Contact
In our efforts to improve communications between parents and school, Santa Lucia has instituted a telephone broadcast system that will enable school personnel to notify all households and parents by phone within minutes of an emergency or unplanned event that causes early dismissal, school cancellation, upcoming events, notifications, or late start.  The service may also be used from time-to-time to communicate general announcements or reminders. This service is provided by SchoolReach, which specializes in school-to-parent communications. Santa Lucia School will continue to report school closings due to snow or weather on all major TV and radio, and will use this system as an overlay to the public announcements

When used, the service will simultaneously call all listed phone numbers in our parent contact list and will deliver a recorded message from Miss Maretea or another school administrator. The service will deliver the message to both live answer and answering machines. No answers and busies will be automatically retried twice in 15 minute intervals after the initial call.
  • This requires NO registration by the parent on the SchoolReach website.
  • All telephone numbers must be correct and up-to-date.
  • All information and contact numbers are strictly secure and confidential and are only used for the purposes described herein.
  • Caller ID
 The Caller ID will display 312-326-1839 which is the main number for Santa Lucia School.
  • Live Answers
 There is a short pause at the beginning of the message, usually just a few seconds. IT IS IMPORTANT TO ANSWER YOUR PHONE AS YOU NORMALLY WOULD "HELLO", and hold for the message to begin. Multiple "Hello's" will delay message. Inform  all family members of this process who may answer your phone.
  • Answering Machines
 The system will detect that your machine has answered and will play the recording to your machine. The maximum numbers of rings before hang up is 5. Make sure your machine answers after 4 rings or you may miss the message.
  • Morning & Day Calls
 In the event a cancellation decision is made the night before, or in the early morning hours, the broadcast message will be sent only to all phone numbers given to the school office: home, cell, and/or work. General announcements would be sent in the same manner.
  • Message Repeat
 At the end of the message you will be prompted to "press one" to hear the message again. This is very effective when a child answers the phone and hands it to a parent, who can then "repeat" the message in its entirety.

If you have any questions,  contact Miss Maratea.  SchoolReach, the service provider, uses the best available technology in the industry to detect the difference between human and machine answers.
How detection works:
  1. The system detects and measures the voice energy when the phone is answered
  2. The systems measures this energy in combination with the background noise and line impairments.
  3. If the system determines that it is a "live" answer, it will immediately start playing the message.
  4. If the system determines that it is a machine, it will wait for 3 full seconds of silence before playing the message with a maximum wait time of 20 seconds.
  5. If the system cannot make a determination, it will default to answering machine thus requiring the three seconds of silence for the message to play. In this case, you may hear a prompt to "Press any key to hear the message immediately."
Some reasons for false detection:
  1. Loud background noise:  television,k radio, general noisy environment.
  2. Cordless phone that has static or other foreign noise.
  3. Not saying hello or delaying saying hello.
What can be done to remedy this?
  1. Do not say hello more than once, if the system detected your answer incorrectly, all noise will reset the three-second counter.
  2. If, after you answer, the message does not immediately play, you can cover the mouthpiece of the phone to cut out all background noise the message should then play after three seconds.
2007-2008
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