Daily student attendance absence notification broadcasts to parents/guardians through SchoolMessenger for school year 2024-2024 started Monday, September 16, 2024.
What does this mean for schools?
- As with the prior school year, attendance phone calls and email notifications are fully automatic, so your staff will not have to manually submit call lists.
- Large volumes of calls can go out at once, meaning we can quickly reach our families in the event their children have unexcused (attendance code "A") absences.
What does this mean for our families?
- With SchoolMessenger, we have access to a number of languages to better connect with our families, including Spanish, Arabic, Filipino, Vietnamese, Chinese.
- SchoolMessenger has functionality to handle mobile phones, voicemail, and answering machines, which will ensure that more families are reached when students are marked absent. See below for the text of the messages that are delivered by school level.
What do we need to do?
Attendance notifications are sent to parents/guardians of students who are marked with an unexcused (attendance code "A") absence by teachers in TeacherVue or by school office staff in Synergy SIS. Simply make sure your school site’s student attendance is put into TeacherVue or Synergy SIS accurately and on time (see deadlines in next section below). Once attendance calls begin for the day for your school, students marked with an unexcused absence (attendance code "A") after the broadcast start time will not receive an attendance notification.
For students whose parent/guardian notifies the school office of an excused absence (attendance code "E") and school office staff post the "E" to the student's record prior to the broadcast start time, the parent/guardian will not received an absence notification.
The auto-dialer will not call parents/guardians of students whose parent/guardian reported the absence via Parent Submitted Attendance ParentVUE prior to the auto-dialer data pull for that day, independent of Status (“Waiting”, “Accepted” or “Denied”).
What time to the phone call and email notifications go out?
Elementary and K-8 schools must have their attendance posted in TeacherVue or Synergy SIS by 10:30 am in order to have their attendance broadcasts start at 10:40 AM (revised 01/22/2020).
Middle and High schools must have attendance posted by 4:20 PM in order to have their attendance broadcasts start at 4:40 PM.
We additionally recommend communicating this attendance call functionality to your school’s families. We suggest sharing information about the attendance calls:
- on your school’s website
- in your principal’s newsletter
- through a SchoolMessenger general announcement broadcast to your families
- by other methods that work well for your school community
What if we don’t want calls to go out on a particular day?
Not a problem. Simply contact the DoT Help Desk at help.sfusd.edu or 415-241-6476 at least two (2) hour prior to your school’s attendance broadcast time, and calls for your site that day can be disabled but will resume automatically for subsequent days.
What if I have more questions?
If you have any questions or concerns, please submit a service request ticket [link].
What is the message that gets delivered?
Daily Attendance Default Message (Elementary & K-8 Schools)
Hello. This is a message from <<School Name>>. Your student <<First Name>> <<Last Name>> was marked absent from school today, <<Day and Date>>. Please call us at <<School Phone Number>> to clear the absence, or send a signed note to the office upon your student’s return to school that explains the reason for the absence. If you have already contacted the school office, you can disregard this message. If you would like to hear this message again, please press the star key on your telephone. Thank you.
Period Attendance Default Message (Middle & High Schools)
Hello. This is a message from <<School Name>>. Your student <<First Name>>
<<Last Name>> was marked absent today <<Day and Date>> during the following class periods: <<Periods Missed>>. Please call our Attendance Office at <<School Phone Number>> to clear the absence, or send a signed note that explains the reason for the absence upon your student’s return to school. If you have already contacted the attendance office, you can disregard this message. If you would like to hear this message again, please press the star key on your telephone. Thank you.
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