When an urgent and safety-related crisis flares up on your school campus, our mobile CRISIS911.app helps school leaders IMMEDIATELY send out important messages to specific school and community groups using your preferred methods and channels.
What problem does the CRISIS911.app solve?
When your school is suddenly hit with an urgent and safety-related crisis – on top of keeping everyone safe – school leaders must also respond to a major real-time communications PROBLEM.
School leaders have LESS THAN 10 MINUTES to quickly establish an official source for news, updates, and accurate information about the crisis.
The expectations for good communications during a crisis are high.
It’s a mistake to rely on the panicked texts and posts from students, parents, staff members, and the media.
Our mobile CRISIS911.app helps you and other school leaders reduce rumors and panic. Using only your smartphone – and even “locked down” away from your desk – you and other school leaders are IMMEDIATELY able to send out important messages to specific school and community groups using the district’s preferred channels.
How does the CRISIS911.app help you and school leaders at crisis time? How does it work?
The CRISIS911.app does not take the place of your crisis prevention planning, training, and protocols.
It is a mobile, cloud-based messaging app designed to help school leaders (school administrators and principals) instantly send out specific text and email messages to key audiences using their smartphones, even if they’re in a hectic “locked down” situation.
The app also allows you and school leaders to quickly post and update crisis news to your own social media and communications channels.
School leaders are able to do this because all of the groups, crisis types, messages, individual contacts, links, and other content are created in the CRISIS911.app during initial set-up, well before the crisis happens. Since you are not in crisis mode, you have ample time to plan messages and prepare.
Getting your key information into the CRISIS911.app ahead of time will save you from fumbling about with your messaging during a crisis. (And of course, you are quickly able to make edits if you need to.)
Why should the CRISIS911.app be included in your toolbox?
Sadly, crisis intervention and prevention are a big part of school life today. There are high expectations on you and every school leader to provide safe and secure schools as well as communicate quick, accurate and useful information to all involved whenever a crisis flares up. The pressure is great!
Not only must you do what you can to save lives and work with your staff and first responders to de-escalate the situation, you must also be able to activate quick, specific, and accurate messages at the same time.
With the CRISIS911.app installed on your smartphone, you will be able to spend more time managing the crisis whenever it hits, and less time communicating about it. You can be in a position to exceed the expectations of your school family and community.
Who created the CRISIS911.app?
Easy Reach Solutions, LLC is a Saas business registered in Michigan in 2015.
Guided by the in-the-trenches input from educators and school administrators, Easy Reach co-founders Zack Collins, Tom Page, and Elizabeth Moraw are committed to developing and building online tools for school leaders so they can save time and resources for the work in their schools that really matters.
Zack is also the co-owner and lead developer of Zaco Technology and Ludus Tickets for schools. Tom and Elizabeth have been leaders in Michigan’s school communications field for more than 20 years. They created the School Communicators Network in 2012 and regularly lead workshops for leaders in schools and other organizations. Their presentation and training topics typically are anchored in improving school PR, marketing, and crisis communications.
In addition to providing communications consulting and coaching for school leaders, the Easy Reach Solutions team created a cloud-based suite of software for schools in 2015, allowing school staff members to efficiently streamline their main event calendar, facility and maintenance work order requests, field trips, and school PR opportunities.
Easy Reach Solutions is excited to launch the beta version of its CRISIS911.app in March, 2020.
What is the potential market for the CRISIS911.app?
Although the beta version of the CRISIS911.app will not be released until early next year (2020), interest in this SaaS product is gaining momentum.
The momentum was given a boost via an extensive “hands-on” working relationship with the Gerstacker Fellowship Program at Saginaw Valley State University (MI). This relationship helped secure more than 20 member school districts that have already committed (prepaid) to using the CRISIS911.app in their schools beginning in the fall, 2020.
Given the importance of the area it addresses (crisis communications), it is anticipated the app will generally be well received by school leaders and school districts. The need is well-known and well-understood, and the market for a mobile easy-to-use crisis communications tool like this is huge.
There are more than 575 public school districts serving PreK-12 students in Michigan, representing a combined total of nearly 5000 individual schools.
In the U.S. there are more than 132,000 K-12 schools according to the 2016 public education census report.
When you add in charter schools, private schools, churches, non-profits, colleges, and other organizations which may have the need for an instant crisis communications app, the market potential is tremendous.
Let’s connect. Let’s get your school district in line to be the next one that’s “crisis ready!”