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?

just be greatful you only have one school texting you, ds2 has disabillities and goes to a special needs school so for the pat four yearsi have been receiving random mainly irrelevant texts from two primary schools, ds1 left primary school on friday so hopefuly high school will be a bit better!

Yes my kids 2 schools both use some kind of messaging app which means on any given day I can sometimes get all manner of different texts from several different numbers and I have no idea which school it's coming from!

We don't get them - we get everything via email instead which I much prefer to the previous school where we'd get 5 emails telling us that sausage rolls for dinner on Thursday 2 weeks ahead have been replaced by sausages instead.

5 texts*

I'm on charge of the SMS service. It was flipping ridiculous, even though it was centrally controlled, people wanted me to send out messages for things like "The Badminton C team, need to bring yellow socks" - people got Pissy when i refused to send it, (as that is an email...tot hos specific people!)

I got so annoyed, that i made blanket rule that only SLT could use i in an emergency situation. so it gets used a few times a year - for things like snow days.

My next "target" is the multiple daily bloody emails sent out to parents. I'm implementing a weekly "digest" of what's uploaded to the parentsportal!

Oh yes the different numbers for texts.
I also get multiple reminders that Wednesday's lunch has been changed but nothing useful.

Again just specifying school is closed due to snow. Great which bloody school though. Drives me mad

Same problems here. However the most annoying I’ve had was last Friday. Bearing in mind my girls’ school finished on Friday, I got a text from the preschool at about 3.35 (they came out at 2.45) to “remind” us that they weren’t opening again until 10th September when the School children return the 4th! I now have to go into work tomorrow and hope I can arrange unpaid leave!

My next "target" is the multiple daily bloody emails sent out to parents.

At least our school have the sense to attach a few things to one email - reduces it a lot - we'll get the weekly newsletter and attached to it it'll have letters for recorder club, or the bajillion local activities for the holidays and the like so you can open the attachments that you're actually interested in. Then it all goes up online if you need to find it later as well.

We used to have this. You would think parents one after another asking wtf this text was would clue them in there was some issue with it - but no.

They've changed now to a system I have to log into to see information. Still random set of stuff - but now I have to hunt for it and check for updates so if I have no idea something is happening I wouldn't know to check.

One good thing down to one child who is older at thsi school so is often source of information.

Sounds about right.
We use an electronic system and I had students in my form asking about trip letters. It turns out their parents must have skim read a bazillion texts because when I went into my staff account the message was 'for students involved in X, please see Mrs Blogs about your letter'.
What some.of my form got was 'there's a trip DC, go and see Mrs Pops'.

These different text services are interesting to hear about. The best services are expensive and school budgets are so tight. Our contract with a good one came up and we didn't renew. The new service is free which meant more money for education but it's really rubbish.

some people won't have a viking hat - absolutely laughing out loud here and I've woken up my snoozing cat. Cat is definitely not as amused as I am

The text reminders are never as late as the children reminding you though: as you lock the door or are in the car or when you see the first school friend. “Oh, today I need to be dressed as a nomadic 1820’s Icelandic person.........and need exactly £9.34 for my school trip”

We were talking about this just the other day! We missed their art presentation to parents :/ the DCs never remember to tell us stuff like this and it was a tiny line on a newsletter (which I located after the event).

But we received a morning of repeat email correspondence about how the lunch had to be changed from "sunshine pizza" to cheese salad. But then something changed and it went back to sunshine pizza again.

FFS.

This is the second conversation I've had in 24 hours when I've given thanks to the fabulousness of my DDs' school. . They use ParentMail and messages are in time and useful. Thank God!

OP's school sounds like the one where I work. There is no policy, strategy or rhyme or reason to the messages sent (one administrator sends them all...following instructions from God knows who). They're utterly mad. Parents complain, gently, a lot, about the quantity of trivial messages and total lack of communication about things like their children not having a Maths teacher for an entire term.

Yep! School text drives me bonkers.

I have three DC at three different schools and when they don’t put the school or teacher or class or anything that is identifying it drives me up the wall.

There’s a leavers thing straight after one of the schools on Tuesday and I’ve had no word about it by text, email or letter. I found out about it yesterday when a mum picked up their chid from a birthday party and she said see you Tuesday as she left and when I asked my DC about it he was ‘oh! Yes something is happening ‘ but couldn’t tell me what. So I’ve emailed the school this morning in the hopes I’ll find out what’s happening.

I get school email. Very informative, child not in registration or tennis club not on, however I do not have a child at the school which is in England while I am in Scotland... have called to tell them but still getting them!

I came looking for this thread today because our school's text service almost made me flip this morning.

Whoops. Pressed 'post' too early. Again.

At 7:45 this morning, while DS was mid-way through putting his uniform on, we get a message saying 'all children can wear non-uniform today' and that 'all children must bring a packed lunch'.

Me and some other Mums suspect that this is related to a trip that all the other years except DS's were going on, and so it might not apply to DS and his classmates. But no one knows for sure... And there's no one there at the school office at that time to call and ask.

So we're just stuck like that –does he put his uniform on and risk being the only one wearing it, or wear his own clothes and risk getting told off for it? (He's a rule-follower, so he went with uniform in the end!) And WTAF about the packed lunch at 30 mins notice – he normally has hot lunches?!

So I've cracked and emailed the school to ask if I can 'feed back some comments' on the text service. We'll see if they bite.

Were I bored at home all day, the text service could probably keep me busy enough to be like a full-time job... missing jumpers, lost teddies, reminders about yet more raffle tickets, endless requests for cereal boxes

DD's school used Parent Mail, a service almost as good as Governmental one. It was meant to be tailored to the child so you registered, then gave information about your child/ren and then it was meant to only send mail from your school which was relevant to your child.

I don't know how I managed it, what with dd being an only child, but I got every single letter for every single year. Furthermore, they would give you a link, not the actual letter, so you couldn't tell until you'd followed the link whether it was relevant or not.

I stopped using it altogether and just used the school site where all letters were posted but with titles like 'Y7 London trip' so I could see before clicking the link whether to ignore it or not.

Ah yes. Our infant school used parent mail. And I thought it was awful.

Until we moved to the juniors where they manage it themselves and it's a complete and utter shambles.

DD's Senior school also put all parent mail on their site too, so I just went there, looked at the stuff for dd's year and for events she was involved in.. Much, much better and less work for everyone.