Does your child's school do text alerts in emergencies?

I was reading through the Sky News updates about the horrific happenings at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut and saw that all parents apparently received text updates about the incident.

This functionality has become more widespread in America especially as a result of the likes of the Virginia Tech shooting when thousands of students needed to me updated instantly.

My children aren’t attending school yet but I will need to add the topic of text updates in emergency situations (even say bad weather) to the agenda for discussion. As far as I know — we’ve been looking at the odd place now and again — text alerts haven’t been something they’ve offered. Indeed many teachers explained to me that there ‘is a yahoo group or something for the parents’.

Does your child’s school offer this sort of immediate status updates by text?