A new service developed by Honeywell’s building solutions business unit can contact parents instantly to let them know about emergency situations at their kids’ schools.

Honeywell is testing the service, called Instant Alert at four schools in California, Virginia, Indiana and New Mexico. The system should be commercially available in January, Honeywell told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It says the new service offers a faster, more reliable alternative to the “phone tree” method now used by schools to communicate news to parents in the middle of the school day.

“Instant Alert allows the school district to speak with one voice in a timely, succinct fashion,” James Peterson, superintendent of Porter School Township Corp. in Indiana where the service is being tested, told the Star Tribune.

Parents provide schools with E-mail addresses and phone, pager and fax numbers on a designated Web site where they can be contacted in the event of an emergency. They can provide and update multiple contact numbers, including numbers of guardians and caregivers. If a school needs to get a message out, a principal or other administrator sends an electronic or voice message to one of Honeywell’s data centers with the information it wants parents to receive.

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