By Sarah Kehoe

This year, Kent School District staff found a fast way to connect with parents during school emergencies.A new phone messaging system called School Messenger allows staff to send recorded messages to parents’ cell phone numbers, alerting them to a situation occurring at their child’s school.

“Technology is becoming a bigger and bigger factor these days, so the messenger is a useful tool for our school district to have,” said Mike Halliday, district spokesperson.”Most parents or guardians have mobile phones and it’s important we have the functionality to inform them about emergency situations through the devise they use the most.”

School Messenger is also designed to determine what a child’s home language is.”We need this because our school district is so diverse,” Halliday said. “The two main languages spoken are English and Spanish, so it was important to us to offer those languages in order for our parents to understand completely what is going on.”

The system is the quickest way district staff can communicate with parents.”We have always done our best to communicate with parents whenever things occur and things just happen so quickly there are lots of deacons to be made,” Halliday said.

“A child’s safety is our main priority; this system allows us to communicate with their parents in a way that is faster than posting something on our website.”

The new feature was tested this month when district officials locked down Kent-Meridian High School for about a half-hour Oct. 8, after hearing a report of a man carrying a gun near French Field, the stadium next to the school.

The incident turned out to be a false report.

“We were able to send a phone message out to our parents, alerting them of the situation and describing how we were handling it,” Halliday said. “Everything worked out well. We like to let our parents know about things like this, especially because the kids will probably be going home and talking about what happened at school.”

The system means parents don’t have to contact the school district for answers.”

We have around 2,000 students at some of our schools, so if we had to just rely on the phone to communicate, it would take much longer to talk to our parents,” Halliday said. “I think this system helps because it answers their questions right away so they don’t feel they need to search to find answers about what is going on with their child.

However, we are pleased to be around to answer any questions parents have for us if they’d like to call.”