What is SENS?

The Statewide Education Notification System (SENS) is an information delivery system that provides critical and time-sensitive information from TEA to Education Service Centers (ESCs), school districts, charter schools and others organizations through a variety of communication channels such as email, phone, voice-mail, and pagers.

The system works very much like an email system. The SENS message author uses email to draft and send the message. The message is translated from that email so that it can be delivered to participant's phones (work, cell and/or home), voice-mail, email, and pagers.  The SENS is intended to supplement, not replace, local, existing emergency communication efforts and information you will receive from television, radio, and other sources.

Important: Each SENS participant is responsible for updating their contact information and profile within SENS in order to receive notifications from the TEA. System reports, capturing the results of communications efforts, will be used to improve the quality of our participant information and notification capabilities.

History

Shortly after the tragic events of September 11th, 2001 the TEA established an in-house system to notify ESCs, school districts, charter schools, and other organizations, so that time-sensitive and critical information could be quickly disseminated. The former system (Reciprix) was based solely on email delivery and was therefore somewhat limited. In January 2002, the TEA began a competitive bid process to find a more robust, commercially available system to handle its critical and time-sensitive notifications to the K-12 education community. The new system is Communicator! NXT.

Contact the TEA SENS Administrator with questions about SENS or this page.
This page was last updated on April 29, 2009.