Info at your fingertips

If you’re on the go and need to check your child’s school lunch menu, or just want to see how the Cyclones did last night, don’t worry: There’s an app for that.

At a Board of Education meeting on May 27, the Rockville Centre School District officially launched an application that can be used on Android and Apple phones and tablets.

Available free from the App Store and Google Play, the application puts many of the school district website’s most-used features at your fingertips. “The board is constantly looking for opportunities to more effectively communicate with our school community,” said Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum Chris Pellettieri, who was in charge of its development. “And I thought about how often everyone uses their smartphone in this day and age, and the ease of using an app. I did some research, and other schools were moving in that direction. And I thought we should do the same.”

With a swipe, users can access news stories, photos, updates from the district’s Facebook and Twitter feeds and more.

Parents deciding whether to make their children lunch or let them buy it can pull up the school lunch menus. There are also “hotlinks” to important pages on the district’s website, like how to get in touch with the Board of Education. There is a scrolling feed of all the latest news from the district, as well as a calendar that displays upcoming events for all of the schools.

“It’s really putting everything on the district’s website that you’d search for right on your phone, right at your fingertips,” said Pellettieri. “It’s very easy to use. You can flick a finger across your screen and get to many different news items, school lunch menus, reports, Power Schools and more.”

The app also gives the district the ability to send notifications to everyone who has downloaded it. They are called “push notifications.” If someone is signed up to receive notifications about Wilson School, for example, the district could send the user a notification if an event is delayed or canceled, or if there’s a snow day. The info would go straight to the user’s phone.