With Winter quickly approaching we will be running a district wide Power Announcement test for students and staff on Saturday, November 22, 2014.
 

The Burlington Township School District continually works to improve the communication between the school district and our parents/guardians.  Last year we implemented the notification system called Power Announcement. This notification system includes enhanced features that promote more effective communications with our entire school district.  The system allows us to notify all BTSD parents/guardians, and staff, of school closings, absences, and emergency situations using email, voice, and text messaging.

Power Announcement allows our school district to send messages using email, voice, and text messaging.  Voice calls will be sent with the caller ID numbers listed below (phone numbers vary by school).  You may want to add this phone number to your contacts to help you easily recognize incoming calls from the school. Text messages will be sent using a caller ID of 77811 for all schools. Please add this number to your contact lists.  Please note you will not be able to reply to text messages sent from the school district.  

District                                609-387-3955               

Fountain Woods                    609-387-1799

High School                          609-387-1713                 
B. Bernice Young School         609-386-3520

Middle School                       609-699-4021

Power Announcement is integrated with the existing PowerSchool Parent Portal.  If you log-on to the Parent Portal you will now see a new link called "Power Announcement."  You will be able to see contact information that Power Announcement will use for notifications.  To guarantee the messaging system is used efficiently, we will need to confirm that your contact information is accurate and up-to-date by November 21.  If any of your contact information needs to be updated, please contact your main office.  

Within this section of the Parent Portal, you will have the ability to choose your communication preferences based on message category, such as School Closures or Student Bulletins, and message type (email, voice and/or text message). You may opt-out of any message category except for Emergency Messages, School Closings, and Absence phone calls.

Setting up your parent preferences is your responsibility and must be set up for EACH individual student.  To receive text messages, you must go to Preferences by Message Type and check the box next to contact me using Text Messaging. 

Note: BTSD does not charge for this feature, but every mobile phone plan is different. Any text messaging fees that apply from your mobile carrier will be your responsibility and not the responsibility of the school.

By default, phone calls and email are chosen.  You will receive messages to every contact field shown and every message category that has all three message types chosen. Please be sure to set your unique preferences if there are any numbers or addresses you prefer not to be contacted. All phone numbers and email addresses must be in a valid format to save properly.

Emergency and school closing messages will always be sent with all three message types (email, text, and voice calls) and to every contact field shown even if you have opted out.  We cannot change this.  Also, attendance messages will be sent to all available phone contact methods regardless of how your preferences are set to ensure student safety.

If you do not have access to log into the Parent Portal and would like to set up an account, please email parentportal@burltwpsch.org with the following information: student's name, student's address, student's grade, parent's relationship to the student, and parent's email address. Please remember, the Parent Portal is only for parents of High School, Middle School, and Fountain Woods students.  A separate letter was sent for Young School students who have not opted into the system, since Parent Portal is not available in that building.

If you have any questions, please contact your child's school.  We hope you appreciate this new school notification system and the flexibility it will provide for you as a parent.

Please remember that we will be running a district wide test for students and staff on Saturday, November 22, 2014 to make sure that the system is running properly before the inclement weather hits our area.

Thank you,

Mary Ann Bell

Asst. Supt for Business/Operations