As a student, keeping in touch with teachers is one of the best ways to stay on top of your school work.  The app Remind was introduced to schools all around a few years back allowing that kind of communication to be possible. However, stay in touch is at risk.

  After growing accustomed to the easily accessible software, the new fee slated to be charged to Verizon customers who use Remind will cut off texting from the list of tasks Remind can complete.

     According to Verizon, about 1.6 billion text messages are sent a year on the app, and the actual messages themselves are sent through a service called Twilio. Due to the new fee Verizon is charging Twilio, the remind owners are ultimately going to be the ones paying for the irritating fee. This will ultimately cause the messaging option that is linked directly to students phone numbers to go away.

    Instead, the actual app itself must be downloaded for students to stay connected. While push notifications can be installed onto the app for it’s users, the texting aspect was much simpler and aided in important classroom information being delivered onto student’s, teacher’s, and parent’s phones.

    The fee Verizon is charging for Remind messages immediately affects students who lack internet service when they are in need of teacher’s messages. The main cause of the hub bub amongst educators is Verizon’s reasoning behind the fee. The network claims that text messages sent through Remind are seen as “spam” which is most frustrating to those sending out the messages.

   Teachers across the nation are taking to social media and getting in touch with Remind CEO, Brian Grey to get their complaints across to Verizon. Middle School teacher, Shea Tomich from San Antonio, Texas explains on Twitter, “Remind has made such a positive impact on my classroom year after year.”

    Being a high school student in classrooms as big as 25 to 30 students, having an outlet for teachers to communicate with you encourages communication which in turn can increase success rates. By being sent a text message reminding students of an upcoming quiz or test, the chances they take this reminder and prepare better is much higher.

    According to research done by New York Times, teenagers check their smartphones 150 times per day. Using this fact to involve schoolwork into their cell phone usage, Remind created a space for parents to also stay informed. School communities across the United States are pleading that Verizon reverse the fee that Tomich also called, “outlandish.”