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The anxiously awaited iPhone version of the Silent Dismissal Parent Connect app is now available in the Apple App Store.

It offers all of the same features as the Android Parent Connect app, including: Basic Features

• View Student Profile including name spelling, classroom assignment, grade level
• Current student setting:
  • Not Dismissed
  • Explicit Dismissal Method for Current Day
  • Dismissal Time when Called

All Access Features may be restricted by school policy

• Update Student Profile
  • Set the default method for each weekday on a go-forward basis
  • Adjust student details including grade, classroom, carpool number, and name spelling
• Dismiss Student from Phone when inside geo-fence location defined by school
• Set alternate explicit dismissal method for the day, e.g, change from carpool to aftercare, assign ride home with friend

The latest version of the Silent Dismissal Parent Connect App provide the greatest access methods to date for parents.

Parents may now set the default dismissal method for the students by day of the week. These settings remain in effect until changed in the future. For example, presume that something has changed at the house and for foreseeable future the child needs to ride the bus on Tuesdays. With a one time setting in the Parent Connect app, the student default for Tuesday will be the bus selected by the parent.

Parents still have the ability to institute a single day override method on Tuesday to change from the defined bus to an alternate method.

Parents have more control and school staff are relieved of the burden of routinely updating student profiles.

For schools who want to provide most of the features of the Parent Connect smart phone app to any parents without a smart phone, Silent Dismissal may now be configured to allow parents access via the web.

As with the Parent Connect App, parents may associate multiple students, set explicit daily method overrides, and manage student default dismissal profiles all through a familiar web browser interface. Parents can also see messages posted to their associated students' classrooms, groups, and the entire school.

Parent web access does not provide a method for parents to dismiss students within a geo-fence boundary and will not provide the upcoming app alert notifications.

Parent Connect Web access is currently in use at select beta test schools and will be available to all clients for the 2016-2017 school year. Silent Dismissal Parent Web Connect will be priced at an additional $2.00 per student license to be paid by the school. The service may be added at any time during the school year. Once added, any additional regular Silent Dismissal student licenses will be priced at the then current rate plus $2.00.

App Alerts will be coming soon and available at no additional cost to schools for parents who have active Silent Dismissal Parent Connect All Access.

With App Alerts, staff will be able to send alert messages to all parents or to only those parents with students associated to a specific classroom or group. Just as messages may be sent to students that belong to a specific group such as a bus, daycare van, or club App Alerts extends this feature to send those same messages to parents' mobile devices.

Imagine this scenario: A bus has arrived to load students but a mechanical issue with the door prevents the bus from departing on time. Many parents along the bus route become concerned when the bus has not arrived at the expected time so they begin calling the school where they are told only that the bus is delayed. Later, when more information is known, staff may need to return telephone calls to those same parents.

With App Alerts, a staff member can enter a short message such as “Delayed due to mechanical problem. More details to follow”, select the bus from the group list, then send the message. All of the parents are notified in a timely manner of the current status. Later, when the problem is corrected, a staff member can enter a follow up message such as “Problem Correct. Expect arrival approximately 20 minutes later than normal” then send the message to all of the same parents.

What was previously a very time consuming condition for the staff now becomes almost effortless.

Consider another situation in which an after school club needs to be cancelled. Without App Alerts, this process would probably go something like this:

• Club leader contacts the school informing of necessity to cancel meeting today
• Front office makes announcement to entire school instructing students in club to come to the front office
• Each child in the club calls a parent to find out what to do at the end of school because the club was cancelled
  • Not every student can reach a parent at that exact moment

This process can take a substantial amount of time and effort by school staff and keeps some children out of the classroom for a protracted period of time.

With App Alerts the process goes like this:

• Club leader contacts school
• Front office types message into Silent Dismissal and all parents are notified via the App Alert
• Parent uses Silent Dismissal Parent Connect App to set the explicit method for the day

Done. That's it. Children do not need to be disturbed in the classroom.