SpackenkillUnion Free School District

SchoolMessenger provides timely communication to parents and staff members on such matters as weather-related closings and delays, attendance, general-interest activities, and district emergencies.

Upon registration in our district, the phone number (home and/or cell) and email address for each parent/guardian will be sent to the SchoolMessenger system to receive messages. Parents and guardians are asked to sign up for a SchoolMessenger account to customize their contact preferences by choosing which phones and emails to receive messages on and what types of messages would like to be received. Please note: we must have at least one phone number to accept Extreme Emergency calls and Attendance calls. For each phone number in the SchoolMessenger, you must specifically opt in to receive text messages.



You will also have the opportunity to opt out of messages by message type*.

*Types of Messages

AM Closings/Delays: Notification that school is closed or experiencing a delay

Attendance: Notification that student was not in school when morning attendance was taken (requires at least one phone number)

Emergency: Extreme Emergency (requires at least one phone number)

General: General Information, such as meetings, events, etc.

Meal Balances: Notification on low or negative funds for breakfast and lunch (coming soon)

Newsletter: Receive the district and school newsletter by email

PM Dismissals: Notification that school is dismissing early or after-school activities are canceled

If your phone number or email address have changed, please contact your child’s school to update the information in our student management system. You may also update your information on the parent portal. For more information about the parent portal, please visit http://www.spackenkillschools.org/parent_portal.

How to Sign Up for and Customize SchoolMessenger

Click here to download the instructions as a printable PDF

OR follow the instructions below:

Contact Manager is being replaced by the SchoolMessenger App.

How do I sign up for the SchoolMessenger App?

Go to https://go.schoolmessenger.com/#/account/login.

Click the Sign up link at the bottom of the page. Enter your email address and create a password. You must use the email address that your district has on file for you. An email will be sent to that address with a secure token. Note: If you receive a message “This email is already registered”, it means that you have already created a SchoolMessenger account via another SchoolMessenger product, such as Contact Manager. Simply go back to the login page and log in. If you get a message that your account is not confirmed, please choose the "Forgot your password" link to reset your password.

   1. After authenticating via your email, return to SchoolMessenger and sign in using your email and password.
   2. When you first sign in to the SchoolMessenger App, you will be asked to update your user settings.


For each phone number listed, please answer Yes or No to receiving phone calls. Once you answer Yes, you can further select what types of phone calls to receive and if you would like to receive a text. You must answer Yes if you would like to receive phone calls for any of the following types of calls.

If you answer No, you will not receive any phone calls on that number. However, we are required to have at least one phone available for extreme emergency and attendance calls.

What's in the SchoolMessenger App?

Once you have created your account, we'll automatically link the records associated with your email address. You can then:

   • View the records associated with your account - student, staff, parent records.
   • Review the last 30 days of messages for all your associated records.
   • View your contact information (If your phone number or email address have changed, please contact your child’s school to update the information in our student management system. You may also update your information on the parent portal. For more information about the parent portal, please visit http://www.spackenkillschools.org/parentportal.)

To configure how you would like to receive notifications, click the Preferences link in the dropdown menu at the upper right of your screen (if you do not see the Preferences link please log out and log back in again).


There are 2 ways to set your contact preferences.

1) Click on a phone number or email address and choose what message types to turn on/off.



Phone settings – Click on Call me to turn calling off/on. Click on Send text to opt in to text messages.


Email Settings – Click on Email Me to set emails off/on



OR

2) Click on a message type and you can select which phones or email to turn on/off.

message preferences

Set Phone, Text and Email Preferences for each message type.