SCHOOL SPOTLIGHT
Guilford County Schools
Keeping families connected at scale with Messages XR Enterprise
As North Carolina’s third-largest district, Guilford County Schools serves a diverse community across 120+ schools, and in a district this size, communication has to move fast and connect with the people who need it.
For the communications team, there’s the daily work of keeping families informed and engaged, especially when messages need to reach a community with different schedules, preferences, and languages.
Gabrielle Brown, director of media relations for Guilford County Schools, shared that the district had longstanding conventions around mass notifications. That foundation mattered even more during a major system shift at the state level, when North Carolina mandated that all public schools transition their families’ data to a new student information system.
At a Glance
A national leader in educational choice, GCS prepares students with pathways to success in college, the workforce and the world.
While the new platform offered a mass notification feature, Guilford had a decision to make: adopt a new messaging tool, or continue with the system its schools already relied on.
“We lent ourselves to sticking with Finalsite,” Gabby shared, “because of the uses and the quality of it.”
For Guilford County Schools (GSC), the decision to remain with Finalsite’s mass notification system, Messages XR Enterprise, considered how they could communicate at scale without adding extra work for its 9,000 employees and nearly 70,000 students and their families.
“It’s important for us to be able to communicate to all of our stakeholders and make sure that they feel confident in the information that they receive, so that they can make the best decision for themselves and for their students.”
GABBY BROWN
DIRECTOR OF MEDIA RELATIONS
Contact data, channel coverage, and reaching families
Messages XR Enterprise gives districts the flexibility to match the message to the moment, sending updates through the channels families actually use, from email and text to voice calls, social posts, and mobile app notifications, all from one place.
And because families can choose how they want to receive information, districts can share the same core update in the format that feels most appropriate, most timely, and most likely to get a response, without relying on a one-size-fits-all approach.
However, reaching everyone takes more than a single channel, and the “right” channel varies by family. The district’s director of communications, Nora Shoptaw, APR, explained that the completeness and accuracy of a contact’s information shape how the district prioritizes delivery methods.
“Our data is such that we have more phone numbers than we do emails. We have a lot of emails, but not a hundred percent,” she explained. “But we still send everything to phones because that’s where we have the most contacts.”
Nora also described a common challenge for districts: messages, especially those sent during the school day, can create pressure on front office staff when families call back for details. Rather than pushing every update from the central office, GCS leans on school-level communications, leveraging the trust families already place in principals and individual school teams.
“Most of our schools send their weekly messages,” Nora said. “Parents will be more likely to listen if they know when to expect it, and they like the routine of how they receive those messages.”
Gabby emphasized that the district keeps communication close to the school level for a reason. “We really empower our principals and our schools to send messaging, because that’s who families are used to and that’s who they trust.”
That strategy strengthens credibility, but it also creates an important need: communication tools that are easy for many users, across many buildings, to use well and consistently.
Why the District Chose Messages XR Enterprise
Guilford County Schools leaned into Messages XR Enterprise as the system its schools already knew, and then expanded its use across the district.
“It’s important for us to be able to communicate to all of our stakeholders and make sure that they feel confident in the information that they receive, so that they can make the best decision for themselves and for their students,” said Gabby.
In a district serving more than 120 languages, language access is key to how messages are sent. Gabby connected that priority directly to the Messages XR Enterprise’s capabilities: “Being able to communicate to families in the language that they understand and the language that they prefer is important to us.”
With more than 140 student cultural and ethnic groups represented in the district, Nora noted that the translation features have made it easier to connect with families in Spanish, Vietnamese, Urdu, Arabic, French, and other languages.
“The automatic translation feature makes it easy to manage,” she said, adding that more families seem engaged, thanks to the default settings in the system.
As GCS expands its district messaging to other efforts, such as a quarterly superintendent newsletter, the team values how Messages XR Enterprise supports these updates.
“It’s really easy to create,” Nora noted. “I liked the formatting and organization of the templates, and how clean and simple it comes together. It’s really easy for people to create one message that goes multiple places, and that’s great for folks who are busy.”
Turning data into action
Messages XR Enterprise also gives the district team a detailed view of what happens after they hit send. With built-in reporting, admins can review delivery outcomes across channels, identify contacts who didn’t receive a message, and flag issues such as blocked recipients or questionable contact records.
For Nora, a big part of success shows up after a message is sent. She uses the reporting to spot the families who missed a message, then works the problem until they’re connected again.
“I try to look at who's not receiving messages, who’s blocked us accidentally, and what bad data we might have,” she said. When families call in, her goal is to get them reconnected and back in the loop quickly.
“I take a lot of calls from parents who either accidentally blocked us or had once intentionally blocked us and want to be included.” And while those bounces can be frustrating, that visibility helps the district treat missed deliveries as opportunities to help families get the updates they count on.
How Guilford County uses Messages XR Enterprise across the district
Gabby described how individual schools use Messages XR Enterprise for ongoing, daily communication, while the district office uses it for moments that affect large groups, such as:
- Weather delays and closures
- Staff updates, like HR notices to employees about benefits
- Automated daily attendance reminders (for schools that opt in)
- Big district-wide events, such as the district’s annual Choice Showcase and upcoming enrollment reminders
Support if it’s needed
When the stakes are high, whether it’s contact data issues or questions about integrations, the team values the responsive support from Finalsite.
“I’m happy with the response rate and a lot of times, the Support team will even send a little customized video of what I’m seeing and how to fix it,” said Nora. “I’ve always had a good experience with Finalsite customer service, and it’s really helpful to have that peace of mind.”
With Messages XR Enterprise, Guilford pairs school-level trust with district-level visibility, so every message strengthens the connection. It’s one way the district supports a shared sense of partnership, helping families stay informed and feel connected to what’s happening in their schools.
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