NS-Lists.org is home to the NS-Lists communication system built around mailing lists and designed specifically for schools. The system greatly simplifies and facilitates email communication between faculty, staff, and the parent community, allowing messages to be targeted to the particular portion of the community most appropriate to receive a particular message. The NS-Lists system is available as an Internet service for a low annual fee. There is no hardware or software for the school to purchase or maintain.
For a quick outline of some of the key features of the system please see the Features Page.
One of the key features of the system is a simple registration process that only takes a few moments. You register your email address (or multiple addresses) once, no matter how many lists the school has or how many classes or activities your child is involved in. Your email address is added to all lists associated with your child. The system will even automatically add your address to relevant new lists as they are created throughout the school year.
For example, if your child joins the drama production next semester, you will automatically be added to the drama mailing list to keep you appropriately informed. On the other hand, if your student is not involved in the drama production, you will not be bothered with the drama list email messages. These are particularly useful features since the system typically manages dozens - even hundreds - of different lists internally for each school. The result is a more customized delivery of email to the user community and more pleasant, effective, communication.
One of the many benefits of the NS-Lists system is increased parent/student participation — we have seen typical student/parent participation in the 80%-100% range when using NS-Lists. Take a look at this actual real-time Status Graph showing participation from North Star Academy. (Your experience will of course vary depending on the Internet demographics of your school's population, among other things).
The system also offers a host of other important features such as: access controls to limit who can send messages to which lists, spam and virus filtering to keep the lists safe, special security features to virtually eliminate reply storms and other forms of inadvertent use and abuse, a school footer on every message, list management to automatically handle rejection and delivery problems, and many more. Collectively, these features make the system simple, safe, reliable, and effective.
NS-Lists began in 2002 from a desire to simplify and improve email communication at North Star Academy in Redwood City, CA. Originally, it was a single, manually-maintained mailing list to simplify communications for the planning of the 8th-grade graduation. That mailing list was named "ns-grade8-parents". All subsequent lists for North Star also started with "ns-", hence "NS-Lists" was born. In less than a year the system had grown to include lists for each grade and the ability to send to the entire school. As the number of lists, and the usage of those lists, began to grow it became clear that manually maintaining multiple separate lists was cumbersome and difficult. Many issues surfaced, such as inappropriate use, access control, monitoring, reply storms, viruses, spam, bad address maintenance, ISP rejection issues, etc.
As the system was enhanced to deal with these and other issues it evolved into something much more than a simple set of mailing lists. It became a useful and critically important school communication system.
Is your school in the SF Bay Area? We would be happy to give an on-site presentation and demonstration of the system to your school's administration, PTA, or district personnel. Please Contact Us to arrange for your demonstration today. For a limited time: Any school that signs up for NS-Lists within 30 days of an on-site demonstration will get an additional 10% discount off the low annual rate.
The NS-Lists service is available to schools, public and private, nationwide. There is no hardware or software for the school to purchase and maintain. Please contact help@ns-lists.org for further information about what the system can do for you and how your school can start using it today.