Communications and Engagement Platform

The Vendor is required to provide comprehensive communications and engagement platform to support mass notification, website hosting, and related communication services for students, families, staff, and the community.
- Provide a fully integrated solution that supports, at minimum:
•    Mass notification and emergency alert capabilities (voice, SMS, email, and mobile notifications)
•    Staff voice communication functionality that allows teachers and staff to communicate with students and families from personal devices while protecting personal phone numbers. 
•    The solution must provide a masked or proxy phone number capability and support voice calls, sending and receiving text messages, and voicemail.
•    Website hosting and content management system (CMS) for district and school sites
•    Parent and community engagement tools
•    Multilingual communication capabilities
•    Integration with the district’s student information system (sis), and other required platforms
•    Implementation, configuration, data migration, and onboarding services
•    Ongoing technical support, training, and system updates
- Technical requirements
1. Hosting and architecture
•    Cloud-based, fully hosted SaaS solution
•    High availability with documented uptime history (minimum 99.5% or higher preferred)
•    Redundant infrastructure and disaster recovery capabilities
2. Security and compliance
•    Compliance with FERPA, COPPA, and applicable student data privacy laws
•    Secure data encryption in transit (TLS 1.2 or higher) and at rest
•    Role-based access controls
•    Multi-factor authentication (MFA) capabilities
•    Annual third-party security assessments or SOC 2 certification (preferred)
•    Clearly documented data retention and data ownership policies
3. Integration capabilities
•    Integration with the district’s student information system (currently synergy), google workspace, and other core district systems as required.
•    Demonstrated experience integrating with k–12 sis platforms and enterprise authentication systems.
•    API availability for third-party integrations
•    Support for single sign-on (SSO) via SAML, OAUTH, or equivalent
•    Ability to sync user data automatically
4. Communication capabilities
•    Multi-channel messaging (voice, SMS, email, app notifications)
•    Multilingual messaging support
•    Message scheduling and automated workflows
•    Reporting and analytics functionality
5. Website and content management
•    User-friendly CMS interface
•    Ada and WCAG accessibility compliance
•    Template-based design with district branding control
•    Mobile-responsive design
6. Implementation and support
•    Detailed implementation timeline
•    Dedicated project management during onboarding
•    Ongoing technical support
•    Training for district and campus-level staff
•    Regular system updates and maintenance.