The randomness of the School - Parent text

[Trampire]

ok this is intended to be lighthearted (if there is such a thing in AIBU

Does your School (and I think I'm mainly talking about Primary) have a Teacher to parent text messaging service?

The randomness of ours leaves me scratching my head at best. There's no consistency in what will be texted. Some days complete trivia thats not what many people need to know and other days complete silence on huge matters.

For instance, last week we had 5 texts about a change to jacket potato days in the coming school dinner menu in Sept.

Today, is the school production and no parents have any clue whether our dcs are supposed to stay in school until the second evening performance or not. No text.

We had 3 texts telling us the newsletter was emailed out to us all.

There is a Leavers Assembly tomorrow that they originally said parents could attend. No text.

A random, frankly terrifying text saying the school had been 'locked down'. The 'threat' was assessed and none of the children have been in danger.
No explanation or follow-up text!!!

My ds is leaving the school tomorrow so it's really not huge problem. I'm finding it more amusing now I think.

AIBU to think it's not just my school that aren't consistent in their texts?

Someone complained at our school that they weren't getting messages.
Now everyone on the contact list gets the messages.
So DH is driven mad by the 5 plus message a day we've been getting this last term.
You know, year X needs sun hats, sun screen and water as they will visit the beach tomorrow.
Year X will need packed lunch. (No idea why. ..)
Year X club isn't on (my DCS don't attend that club)
Please check your child's uniform, a jumper has gone missing. (That one infuriates me as it's only sent when the parent has come in and gone ballistic at the receptionist! )
But you're not U, it's meant to be a useful information tool but ends up being part helpful and part confusing.
Ah technology, blessing and curse.

I think it's the constant messaging of minor stuff verses the complete silence on stuff that people are waiting on info .

I can ignore the random x year need this/that etc if the other stuff came through too.

I mean, our school was on lockdown????

We get completely random there is a wear a viking hat to school day texts that no one has been told anything about and they are due in tomorrow ones. A class teachers have access to sending them so sometimes think they suddenly have a great idea but don't think through things like how some people wont have a viking hat etc. They also send multiples of the same text which can be a bit irritating. i also had to ask them multiple times to take my third and fourth emergency contacts off the mailing list as my mum was not very interested in a cake sale when she was working away and has never had to pick the children up from school the whole time she has been on the contact list.

Ha ha! My children's school is like this except I get double of all texts as I have two girls currently there.
We had loads of texts about pupils returning any borrowed equipment but nothing when someone snuck into the school and stole a pc.

Our primary was similar. Date change to school play, new dates clash with lots of secondary school induction days. No texts or notification until 2 days before!

But texts about suncream & nits

We once got one asking the children not to forget their willies for the woodland walk. Haha!

You must have kids at the same school as me. It is annoying and the spelling and grammar mistakes are an extra bonus .

It was part of my last job to send out the text messages, and believe me it's a thankless task!

The reason you are getting so many reminders about messages that have already gone out is because 5 parents will have come in on consecutive days saying "Oh, I didn't get the message about... " and the office staff will have sent it out again (with gritted teeth) because better lots of texts than people missing out on important information.

Well done also to the parent at our school who came in and told us that they hadn't had any messages for 4 MONTHS because they changed their phone number and forgot to mention it. (This is not unusual!)

School offices are really busy places at the end of the school year, so maybe cut the staff a bit of slack??

Ours are actually OK only sent to the correct year group etc. But always far too late to actually be helpful. I'll get a text as I'm leaving the house reminding me that all y2 children need to come to school dressed as aquatic creatures today.

I have 3 kids in 3 different schools. All 3 schools send out text messages about random stuff without naming the school - sometimes I can work it out by content - eg a message about wellies is unlikely to come from 6th form, but snow days are a trial, when you get 'school is closed' 'school will be opening at 10.00' 'school is open' you don't know which ones to nag out of bed!

Ah yes. We get a week's notice if the lollipop man is not going to be there, and less than 24 hrs notice of sports day, own clothes for no reason day and you need to bring this random object to school today day.

It is infuriating!

BTW - our school text service always changed "wellies" to "willies"! I lived in fear of accidentally sending that out!

Also, the number of characters you can use in any text is very limited (usually 160) so texts can often appear oddly written/abrupt.

And don't even mention the appalling spelling and grammar shown by many, many parents over the years when writing anything to the school

Haha I don’t miss being a teacher and the texting...
we would send out reminders for things.. then get complaints about too many texts.so not send so many then have grumpy parents saying we hadn’t reminded them about things... and they couldn’t possibly remember homework being due 🤦‍♀️
Op that must have been terrifying with the locked down message.. take it all was ok?
Sounds like they need to prioritise messages for sure!

Our school uses the our school app and every so often we get a million calendar updates around 9-10pm with next terms important dates.

The school isn't a unified organisation which is why you get this.

Office in charge of sunscreen and nits
Teachers in charge of classroom antics
Head in charge of diary and 'big' stuff

I work in a school office (after 18 years of commercial sector work) it surprises me too.

cambionome is this why you get a message from school with the main message in text number one and text number two only has one word in it? That drives me mad

A basic point: if you put the school name on every text it uses up more characters and so makes it even more difficult to explain anything in any detail at all. The best and most obvious thing to do is for parents to save each number on their phone under the school name, so you will immediately know which school is texting. (That is to zeebeedee).

Omg this thread has me in stitches, I thought I was the only one!!!

Do all your kids go to the same school as my DS?

At our school ANY TEACHER can send out a text from their own phones via the system, which means that every time a teacher remembers something they previously forgot to tell parents about we get a random text. Sometimes it's like a series of brain farts.

and don't even get me started on the app..... sometimes it's a notification from the app, sometimes it's a text, sometimes neither!!

Last week there was a notification about a missing cardigan yet fuck all on the in app calendar about either the leavers assembly or what time school closed on the last day, you know, the important stuff!!

The best and most obvious thing to do is for parents to save each number on their phone under the school name, so you will immediately know which school is texting.

Wouldn't work - ours constantly come up from different numbers depending on which teacher or staff member has logged in to send the message!!!

OP much like your school ours sends us endless messages about menu changes but not much about anything else.

Actually that's not quite true they have a very helpful habit of sending out "reminders" (which are the first most parents have heard) about a variety of in school events and fancy dress/mufty days etc. but they send out these texts at about 8:30 ON THE DAY! By which time I'm already at work and 90% of parents are already en route.

Also, really picky bugbear lately is that the text service used to show in your message screen as "Soup For Brains Junior School" until about 6 months ago when suddenly it showed up as an ordinary number. I wouldn't mind that as I just added it to my contacts but every single text they send seems to come from a different number after adding the first 8 to the contact in my phone I gave up as it made no difference. It's really irritating.

Oh yes.
Ours changed message service part way through the year so instead of getting one from a consistent name "Ruddiford Primary School" so all the messages are under one.
It arrives under RPS followed by a mobile number. I've rarely had 2 messages from the same number.

So if you actually have a useful one, finding it again is near impossible.
We have days where we have four or five along the lines of " year 3 girls football needs to bring back the letter. We still have 3 outstanding".
I have neither a girl nor a year 3, and wonder at the economy of sending a message to 600pupils rather than targeting the three.

As far as I can tell the only restricted to a group one are the school trip ones. Getting back early/late are very useful.
However the residential trips which say "every child slept brilliantly, we've all had a marvellous breakfast and are all amazingly enthusiastic about their first activity today" wear rather then by the second residential trip. Especially when on the previous one, despite getting identical texts you know (because the children said) that the sender of the texts shouted at them for messing about at 4am and not going to sleep, they put in a complaint about the standard of the breakfast...

Why do they all come from different numbers too? It’s so confusing.

Cambionome as soupforbrains and FrangipaniBlue have also experienced, the messages come from different numbers - believe it or not, I do have numbers for each school saved in my phone!

Also 2 of the 3 schools are widely known in our city by initials, which would take up less characters than typing s c h o o l !

I used to have 3 children at the same school. Texts used to be a nightmare. We'd get one sent that was so vague that if you had multiply children at the school you struggled to work out which child it was relevant to.
Another one who also had texts sent from different phone numbers throughout the school year. They also used to ring from different numbers as well so I wouldn't answer as it was an unknown number but would then spend the next few hours trying to track down the teacher who left the message asking me to ring them back.

Mine don't come from a number I can see. My phone tells me it's from GROUPCALL, and refuses to give me the actual number. They start each message with an abbreviation of the school name though.