If you live in an area with heavy snowfall during the winter months, here’s how to get notifications on your iPhone when school delays and closures happen.
If you live on the east coast or midwest, snow is inevitable in winter, and it’s possible for schools to be postponed or closed for the day when enough snow falls. If you have kids or you’re at school and hate constantly refreshing your local news website to learn about delays and closures, you can be automatically notified when such events occur right from your iPhone.
However, it’s a little tricky because it all depends on where you live, so to receive notifications for school delays and closures, you’ll have to rely on what your local school system or news channel has to offer for options.
Here are some options to consider for getting iPhone notifications about school delays and closures.
iPhone Notifications for School Delays and Closures
There are several ways to get notifications on your iPhone when school is delayed or closed. The most popular option many news stations offer is the ability to sign up for text alerts and receive text messages whenever there is a school delay or closing.
For example, one of my local news stations provides all kinds of news, weather, etc. but I can also select a specific school or a specific school system, so whenever there is a delay or closure for a school I specify, you will receive a text message about it.
Check out your local news stations’ websites to see if they offer a similar feature like this one.
Another option is to see if your school system has its own mobile app. You don’t usually see this in small towns, but larger cities with larger school systems sometimes have their own iPhone apps that you can download from the iTunes App Store. Here in Fort Wayne, Fort Wayne Community Schools has its own iPhone app, but it’s pretty lacking in the design category.
However, if you want push notifications for school delays and closures, and even in larger cities, mobile apps for school systems are probably a little better than what you’ll find in my city of residence.
If your school system doesn’t have an iPhone app and your local news stations don’t offer any text alerts for school delays and closures, most news station websites have RSS feeds you can follow. However, you need to use a service like IFTTT to get certain updates from this RSS feed to reach your iPhone. Fortunately, we have a handy guide on how to use IFTTT (it’s aimed at Android, but works just as well on iPhone).
You can set IFTTT to receive a push notification when there is a new update in the RSS feed. You can even specify it and add keywords, so you’ll be instantly notified when only one of those keywords is mentioned, such as school being late or closing for your particular school.
