Remind Ends for Verizon Users

          

             Recently, Verizon, the telecommunications company, has developed a fee for Remind, an app used for schools and students, to send text reminders to the users. Remind is trying to negotiate with Verizon, but Verizon isn't complying to their requests.
            Verizon decided to issue this fee because it wanted to stop the spam coming through the Remind app. This fee requires Remind to pay almost 11 times more than what it already pays today. Richard Young, a director of corporate communications at Verizon, told USA TODAY, "We want nothing more than to ensure that parents, teachers, and students will receive text message. Users of the app shouldn't worry about not being notified if there is an issue at school." Young said that Verizon has offered to run the app through text messages for free.
            A Remind CEO told USA TODAY that Remind won't be able to afford to pay a new fee, because it has over 31 million monthly users. This would significantly increase the price to run the app. Not being able to afford to pay for the usage of Remind through text messages will result in over 7 million users not being able to receive the text messages.
            Many teachers at Chadron High School will be greatly affected including Brenda Lanphear, English teacher. Lanphear uses remind in her classroom to remind students of upcoming tests and projects. She also uses it to notify students of weather conditions or updates of competition times for the Speech team. Lanphear said, "The members of our school have the opportunity to download the app, but most schools will be negatively affected." She hopes that Verizon will decide to not charge for usage of Remind.
            Jerry Mack, principal of Chadron High School, says, "All students without a smartphone that are unable to download the free app will be unable to receive texts and will be forced to subscribe by email." Mack said that people don't often check their email, so they won't be able to receive important school notices such as the safety and crisis announcements. He also said, "We would hate to see interruptions in our notices. It is very vital that we communicate with our community." Chadron has had one of the older and most used accounts on Remind. They have lots of students and parents that are notified of important activities or assignments that are happening. Not being able to notify all of the students, staff, and parents could put some of them unknowing of what is happening, said Mack.
            Some of our students including, Morgan Rutledge, rely on Remind every day. Morgan uses Remind for advanced biology, FBLA, and for dance. "The change won't affect me a lot, because I can easily switch to the app to get the messages," said Morgan. Morgan said that the change was very weird and random, but it shouldn't affect too many students. Another student,
            Since the fee was put in place, many of Remind and Verizon users will have to put the app on their phone to receive the reminds instead of through text messages.