School Safety: Tools to Help You Plan Ahead

Frogtummy modules can strengthen school emergency communication and preparedness plans. From message templates to parent alerts, we offer ways streamline your process and reduce confusion when it matters most.

Using the "Emergency" Message Type 

Overcommunicating can lead to information fatigue, making it more likely that families ignore all messaging and/or opt out of messaging. With messaging legal requirements, Frogtummy is legally required to allow parents to opt out of School Announcements, Emergency Messaging, or All communication. 

So, when sending an emergency message from myInbox, be sure to select Emergency as the message type; this ensures the message will go to families even if they have opted out of School Announcements, helping schools reach the greatest number of families.

We recommend selecting Emergency for situations like:

• Emergencies – Hold, Secure, Lockdown, Evacuate, and Shelter Actions
• Snow Days – Delayed Start or Virtual Learning Day
• Drill Notifications – Ensures families who have selected to only receive emergency notifications know what to do in case of an emergency.

Please note: Sample templates provided by Frogtummy are for reference only. Frogtummy makes no guarantees regarding their accuracy, effectiveness, or suitability for any emergency and assumes no liability for their use or modification. Schools are solely responsible for reviewing, customizing, and approving all communications before use.

Sending Messages from a Mobile Device

In the case of evacuation or emergency limiting the use of a computer, Frogtummy schools with myInbox can send messages to their families from a mobile device. 

1. From the browser on your phone, navigate to your school site and scroll to the bottom of the page. 
2. Click Login.
3. Enter your email and password. 
4. Click myInbox from the shortcuts page. (If myInbox doesn’t appear, click any other product that appears and you will see it.) 
5. Once on the myInbox tab, you can send a message as you would from your computer.

NOTE: Schools are encouraged to test sending a message on a mobile device to walk through the process and ensure they know how.

Using Forms for Emergency Check-Ins

Frogtummy forms are a powerful tool schools can use for students to mark themselves safe or parents to mark their student safe. With an emergency check-in form, schools can:

• Allow students to mark themselves (or parents to mark their child) as “safe”
• Allow students to report their location
• View data collected in a real-time report
• Determine what action the form triggers (send email, collect data, etc.)

Best practices in creating and using a form for emergency check-ins:

• Create a page on your site for the form that isn’t linked to a menu. This will make it so the form can be filled out by anyone with the link.
• Use clear and concise language on the form to communicate its purpose and in messaging sent out about the form.
• Test the form by filling it out yourself
• Send the link to students in drill messaging. This gives the students a chance to practice using the form and the school a chance to see what the gathered data looks like.
• Edit the action the form takes when submitted and interaction details for a deep dive into what the form does.

Want to know more about forms? See our training video below, starting at 19:55, for a walk-through of creating and using forms to mark students safe in an emergency.

Site Notices for Urgent Updates

Your school website can play a key role in emergency communication. You can use site notices—pop-up banners on your Frogtummy website—to post urgent messages that are:

• Instantly visible to visitors on any page on your site
• Easy to update in real-time
• Complementary to your email/text alerts
• Easy to create ahead of time for quick use when needed
• Fully customizable

These notices are ideal for school closures, delayed start, emergencies, or directing families to more detailed instructions.

Educating Families on Emergency Protocols

Good communication doesn’t start during a crisis—it starts well before. We wish to emphasize the value of educating families on your school’s emergency protocols.

Suggestions on how to best accomplish this include:

• Send post-drill recaps to families (e.g. “Today we practiced a lockdown. Here’s what your student experienced.”)
• Create a dedicated safety page on your school website with clear guidance, you can send families to this page in your site notices or drill messages.
• Create video demonstrations to show families what occurs in each type of emergency

Teaching families the language used in emergency protocols and what to expect in an emergency helps them understand the school's emergency plans. And when families understand your plan, they’re less likely to panic—and more likely to respond appropriately.

Technical Tips & Best Practices

• Keep SMS messages concise to avoid deliverability issues, especially with T-Mobile users
• Consider sending both email and SMS when the content requires more detail
• Limit the number of SMS messages and emails you send to families to avoid information fatigue
• Use SMS only when information is time sensitive; otherwise, use email
• Test messages in advance to ensure formatting is clear (send messages to yourself as a test)
• See our Drill and Emergency Templates for sample notification ideas

When creating a template, does the template save the message type?

A template contains only the message itself and does not save settings like message type (School Announcement vs Emergency), contacts the message will send to, or dates and times the message will send. 

To use a template most effectively, please follow this process:

• Select the template to be used
• Edit the message according to need (email subject and body, SMS message, and voice message)
• Mark the appropriate message type (School Announcement or Emergency)
• Select which contacts should receive the message
• Schedule when the message should be sent
• Save and exit the message editing window

Can the "Safe Check-in" form send a notification to parents when a student marks themself as safe?

Why doesn’t T-Mobile always send my SMS messages?

T-Mobile tends to be extra restrictive of SMS messages. Sometimes they will restrict messages longer than 160 characters, instead of breaking them up into multiple messages. They can also be extra restrictive on quiet hours.