Houston, TX – April 1, 2006 – Houston Independent School District’s Hogg Middle School has a new tool that empowers students to create and foster a safe and threat free environment. Principal Imelda Medrano’s choice to implement the AnCommXpress service will allow her student to anonymously report specific topics of concern to selected Hogg staff members.
The U.S. Secret Service and Department of Education’s Threat Assessment in School Guide concluded that there is a pervasive sense among students that telling grownups that they or another student is in pain may violate an unwritten, but powerful “code of silence.” And in order to prevent this behavior schools should create a climate of safety where a student has a reprisal-proof way to reach out to an adult. With this solution in mind AnComm, Inc. uses a familiar medium, the internet, to build positive connections between students and adults in their school.
Specifically AnComm, Inc. provides an encrypted web based reporting service that opens two-way lines of communication between students and designated officials within their school. Students log on to the service from ANY computer with internet access and have the ability, on or off campus, to compose messages about specific topics such as bullying, violence, suicide, and weapons. Faculty recipients are alerted in real-time to new messages and have the opportunity to respond. The dialogue created not only opens an invaluable channel of communication but creates the important distinction for children between tattling and telling, ratting and reporting.
Additionally, AnComm serves as an assessment tool by providing the administrators detailed usage reports which reveal topics of greatest concern within their student body and each grade. Armed with this data, Hogg Middle School can take the proactive steps of implementing highly targeted preventative programs. More importantly, the service gives the unreachable child a voice and weaves a web of support, breaking the code of silence through anonymous communication.
The software was originally developed for schools as a response to increasing media reports of tragic events occurring in America's schools. Beta testing began in James Bowie High School in Austin, Texas, in 2001. The students actively participated in developing and recreating the software to fit an educational environment. Within two weeks of implementing the program, an impending suicide was reported and prevented. To date seven suicides have been prevented by the use of the service.
Hogg Middle School plans to launch the service in April and its 1,000 students will access the service with a designated user id and password from the school’s homepage or at https://hogg.ancomm.com.
AnComm, Inc. is especially pleased to add Hogg Middle School and looks forward to the positive impact it will have on the school environment. “We want every child to feel safe, secure and capable of learning”, said AnComm’s President Carter B. Myers. “We are also very excited about having our second school in Houston ISD and look forward to an opportunity to reach and share our solution with the other schools in the district,” said Myers.
About AnComm
AnComm is a leading provider of anonymous messaging and communications solutions to the education market. Easy to implement and affordable, ‘‘Talk About It®’’ opens two-way lines of communication between students and school administrators. For students, ‘‘Talk About It’’ gives students a web-based tool to communicate their troubles, breaking the code of silence through anonymous communication. For schools, administrators and counselors are newly empowered with information so that they may take proactive steps to communicate, intervene and resolve school violence before it occurs.
AnComm was founded in 2005 and has offices in Houston, Texas and Oxford, Mississippi. To learn how your school or educational institution can benefit from AnComm’s ‘‘Talk About It’’ anonymous online and text based reporting service, visit our web sites at http://talkaboutit.ancomm.com or http://www.ancomm.com or call (866) 926-2666. |
