Benefits of a Unified School-to-Home Communications Platform

When our school-home communication platform was no longer meeting the needs of our district’s changing demographics, we decided to take action.

Our system only supported two languages, English and Spanish, but many of our families also spoke Haitian, Ukrainian, German, and various other languages. This created a communication gap between us and our increasingly diverse student population. We were also facing other issues with the communication platform, which could not properly manage our student food service balances, for instance.

Enhancing School-Home Communication

To compound existing challenges, our district was not getting the support we needed from our vendor at the time. When we requested help, they were slow to respond and not particularly helpful. As longtime users of the Skyward student information system (SIS), we learned about their integration with ParentSquare and decided to switch. We reached out to them, set up our account, and sent messages that afternoon. We took a phased-in approach and gradually moved all of our communications over to the new communication platform.

Five Ways We Improved School Communication

• Better visibility into district demographics. With so many new families moving to the area, we needed a platform like this to accommodate various languages. When we implemented the new platform, we were absolutely flabbergasted at the demographics that we actually ended up with. For example, our district serves two German-speaking families, two that speak Vietnamese, three that speak Arabic, and four that speak French (among others), for a total of 10 different languages.

• Improved school-home communications. Communicating with families in those languages has been a real game-changer for our district. In fact, the platform has opened up a mass communication avenue for us that we did not even know existed. We also regularly send out a newsletter translated into recipients’ native language.

• 100% contactability. We know that parents and guardians are opening the messages and reading them because we have the insights on our platform dashboards. We did not have that information before, but we can guess that contactability used to be around 70%. Now it’s 100%. We can also track the opening of messages and see if someone using a specific email address or phone number opened the message on a specific date.  

• A means of broaching sensitive topics. The system also maintains the recipients’ emergency contact information and provides access to vital support services for individuals in crisis. Statistically speaking, we know that the holidays can be a rough period for some people, so we started including 988 suicide hotline numbers to let everyone know that they are not alone and that there is help available. Knowing that families are receiving that information in their native language is comforting.

• Control over our data. Our previous system was cumbersome when it came to data, requiring a lengthy process to implement changes. Now, we can just directly input our desired actions. For instance, if we want to send a message exclusively to the families of students with IEPs, we can filter our audience and send the email. It’s straightforward and efficient.

Service After the Sale Counts

Districts that may be considering a new or replacement communication platform right now should do their due diligence on the vendor before making their final decision. Service after the sale ensures a smooth transition, maximizes the platform’s potential, and fosters long-term satisfaction. We cannot say enough about our platform’s support team compared to that of other vendors. When you call, somebody picks up the phone. They pretty much know what they need to know, and they can help us immediately.