Los Angeles Unified School District Becomes the Largest School District in the Country to Implement a District Wide Mass Notification Service.

District Selects Connect-ED(R) from The NTI Group, Inc. to Keep Students Safe and Parents Informed

SHERMAN OAKS, Calif., Oct. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- The NTI Group, Inc. (NTI) announced today that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) has selected the Connect-ED notification service. The system will be used for school-to-parent communication in the event of an emergency, but will also be used for regular attendance notifications, as well as important school and district announcements.

"We applaud LAUSD officials for taking charge of student safety and utilizing the Connect-ED system to communicate with parents and organize staff during emergency situations," said Robin D. Richards, Chairman and CEO of NTI. "Effective communication during emergency situations is vital to student safety."

The Connect-ED service will also enable school administrators to increase their communication with the school community by sending messages in multiple languages to parents and staff members in a matter of minutes. This means that the district can ensure that parents will receive important information about the safety of their children in the language they use at home.

The Connect-ED service also allows LAUSD to engage parents by notifying them of important announcements, updates and meetings. The service can be used to inform parents of upcoming teacher/parent meetings and information about attendance, holidays, field trips and bus routes. It can also be tailored to send messages to parents with children in specific grades or to parents of students participating in a particular sports team or club.

The fully hosted service does not require additional hardware, so the Connect-ED service can be used from any telephone or computer with Internet access, allowing LAUSD administrators to send vital messages from wherever they are located -- even if they are evacuated in an emergency situation.

To ensure that important messages and alerts reach students and staff quickly, no matter what their preferred method of communication is, the Connect-ED system sends voice and text messages through four different modes of communication:

   -- Voice messages to home phones, work phones, cell phones, and e-mails   -- Text messages to cell phones, PDAs and other text-based devices   -- Written messages to e-mail accounts   -- Messages to TTY/TDD receiving devices for the hearing impaired     About The NTI Group  

The NTI Group, Inc. (NTI), a Delaware corporation, is a privately held company that provides award winning communication systems designed specifically for local, regional, state, and Federal government entities. The Connect family of services enables rapid dissemination of critical information via voice and text devices using its premier mass notification engine designed to allow users to quickly and easily record and send time-based notifications to thousands of people in minutes using just a telephone. NTI makes and distributes the Connect-ED(R), Connect-CTY(R), Connect-GOV(R), and Connect-MIL(R) systems, allowing users to target specific groups and/or geographic regions within their database(s) and engage recipients in two-way communication by asking them to respond to questions via their telephone keypads.

CONTACT: Elizabeth Freeman, +1-916-288-2201, for The NTI Group, Inc.