Educators throughout the nation received a nasty surprise last week as the messaging service, Remind, announced it would not longer be able to provide communication services between schools and parents due to a fee increase passed by Version Wireless.
Remind, which is used by many school districts to send notices to parents, announced the changes would raise the cost of the service from $380,000 to over $4 million per year, which the company would not be able to support while keeping the app free for users. After the announcement Remind users took to social media to voice their opposition to Verison’s changes
After 48-hours of response from the education community, Version announced it would rework its new fee system, which was intended to protect against spam messages, to not affect the Remind notification service.
Tyler Hansford, Superintendent of Union Public School District, which uses the Remind app, said UPSD had been keeping a close eye on the potential changes and had a backup notification system in place. However, he said he was glad Version changed its mind.
“We’d rather stay with Remind for continuity and because it’s free, but we’ll do whatever we have to to be connected with our stakeholders,” he said via text message.
In a press release Wednesday, Version officials said the company was committed to keeping communication between educators and parents open. As long as Remind did not charge educators and parents, Version said it would absorb the messaging costs for the app for K-12 schools.
Currently, Version and Remind are negotiating college and pre-K messaging rates. However, the service will remain free for K-12 users for the time being.
