Press Category: On the Wire

April 2, 2026 – seCuREgift, an innovative risk-free charitable giving solution, has closed the sale of two public golf courses located outside Tucson, Arizona. The transaction generated nearly $2 million in net proceeds for Purdue University.

The properties were sold through a digital auction platform using the seCuREgift process, which enabled Purdue to efficiently monetize the gifted commercial real estate without assuming any risk or liability. From the signing of the gift acceptance agreement to the final closing, the entire process took approximately 100 days.

“Purdue is immensely grateful for this transformative gift,” said Marcus Knox, Assistant Vice President of Planned Giving at the Purdue Research Foundation. “The seCuREgift process allowed us to accept this unique commercial real estate asset with zero risk or liability. It opens an entirely new dimension for considering gifts of commercial real estate that we previously would not have been able to accept.”

About seCuREgift

The seCuREgift process was developed by WYZE and Thomas Charitable Advisors. It combines deep expertise in commercial real estate dispositions with advanced charitable planning strategies to help nonprofits safely accept and monetize gifts of commercial real estate.

Designed to eliminate financial, operational, and legal risks for charities, seCuREgift manages the entire disposition process—from acceptance through sale—while ensuring full compliance. Charities receive the net proceeds directly from escrow at closing, with no administrative burden or exposure to liability. By removing these barriers, seCuREgift significantly expands the types of valuable commercial real estate gifts that nonprofits can confidently accept.

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BALTIMORE, Md. — March 31, 2026 — New Jersey’s Linden Public Schools (LPS) today announced a new initiative to fight chronic absenteeism in Linden High School. Supported by a new partnership with Concentric Educational Solutions, this initiative implements an innovative, human-centered service model to engage students and families in addressing the academic, social, emotional, and environmental factors contributing to chronic absenteeism.

LPS, a diverse, 11-site school system serving more than 6,100 preK3–12 students in Union County, New Jersey, is dedicated to empowering all learners and developing future-ready individuals. As part of its latest strategic roadmap released in July 2025, LPS established a priority goal to reduce chronic absenteeism by 35% by June 2030. Following a rigorous review of potential partners, the district selected Concentric Educational Solutions to support its efforts toward this goal by fostering long-term, trusting relationships with students and families that strengthen learning engagement and reduce barriers to school attendance.

Concentric partners with school systems to combat the urgent issue of chronic absenteeism. Concentric’s unique approach leverages trained members of the community to gather real-time insights from students and families that help school systems respond to student absences earlier, align resources, and address the factors driving disengagement. Services Concentric will provide to LPS include:

• Home visits by trained, community-based teams to enrolled Linden High School students identified as chronically absent or not attending school
• Engagement with families through collaborative discussions to identify barriers to attendance
• Custom ethnographic research from noted scholar and Howard University Professor Dr. Ivory Toldson interpreting the data collected during family engagements and outlining how and why chronically absent students have disengaged from learning
• Collaboration with LPS administrators that turns research into intervention and remediation strategies for the students and families engaged during home visits

“Chronic absenteeism is not simply an attendance issue — it is a student success issue, and we take it personally in Linden,” said Linden Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Atiya Perkins. “Every day a student is not in their seat is a day of instruction missed or a relationship or friendship impacted or not created. These are all opportunities that require consistent presence and attendance. Our Show Up and Roar campaign reflects our belief that showing up is the foundation of everything: resilience, opportunity, achievement, and relationships. Partnering with Concentric deepens the work we are already doing with intention and purpose, because every Tiger deserves every chance to walk across our graduation stage prepared for what comes next.”

Chronic absenteeism, defined by the U.S. Department of Education as missing 10% or more of school days, emerged as a serious challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the American Enterprise Institute’s Return 2 Learn Tracker, chronic absenteeism surged nationwide from 15% before COVID-19 to 28% in 2022 and remains elevated at 24% in 2024.

“Concentric Educational Solutions is proud to partner with Linden Public Schools on their efforts to fight chronic absenteeism,” said Concentric Educational Solutions CEO Molly Hebert Loyd. “Dr. Perkins and her talented team are deeply committed to helping every chronically absent student return to school and re-engage in learning, and we are excited to support their efforts.”

To learn more about Concentric Educational Solutions’ approach to combating chronic absenteeism and download the company’s new white paper on chronic absenteeism, visit the company’s website, follow the organization on X, or connect on LinkedIn.

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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. – ParentSquare, the trusted leader in school-home engagement for K-12 districts, today announced the appointment of Joel Hames as Senior Vice President of Product and Anni Baghdasarian as Vice President of Strategic Operations, as the platform plays an increasingly central role in district communications. 

Hames will lead ParentSquare’s product organization, overseeing product strategy, innovation, and delivery across the platform. He brings more than 30 years of experience in education, including 15 years leading product teams at edtech companies such as Subject, Paper, Schoology, and PowerSchool. His background as a district instructional technology director informs a product philosophy grounded in real-world district needs and outcomes. 

“At ParentSquare, product excellence starts with a deep understanding of how schools and families actually work,” said Hames. “I’m excited to join a company that’s setting the standard for meaningful, inclusive engagement and to help continue raising the bar for the experience we deliver to districts, schools, and families.” 

Baghdasarian will lead ParentSquare’s strategic operations, with responsibility for cross-functional alignment and operational execution. She brings more than 17 years of edtech leadership experience and deep expertise across content management systems, payments, and district communications. Prior to ParentSquare, Baghdasarian served as President and Chief Operating Officer at Edlio. 

“Trust is foundational in district partnerships, and ParentSquare has earned it,” said Baghdasarian. “I’m looking forward to supporting districts’ long-term needs as the platform continues to evolve.”

“These leadership additions reflect the scale and complexity of the work districts rely on ParentSquare to deliver,” said Sohit Wadhwa, CEO and co-founder of ParentSquare. “Joel’s product leadership and Anni’s operational experience support delivery at scale for a platform serving millions of students.” 

Hames and Baghdasarian start their respective roles this month. 

About ParentSquare

ParentSquare is the trusted leader in school-home engagement, helping K-12 districts nationwide reach every family with an award-winning, all-in-one communication platform. Reaching over 22 million students across the country, ParentSquare helps districts consolidate disconnected tools and outdated communication systems with personalized messaging, websites, forms, payments, and more—in one easy-to-use platform. With powerful features for achieving 100% contactability, two-way translation into 190+ languages, and purpose-built AI enhancements, ParentSquare empowers districts to invite every family to be involved in their student’s education, no matter their home language or the device they use.

Recognized for growth and innovation by Inc. 5000, GSV 150, and more, ParentSquare was founded in 2011 in Santa Barbara, California. Learn more at parentsquare.com.

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SAN FRANCISCO, March 24, 2026 — More than 30 states have moved to ban student cell phones in schools to protect instructional time, but the shift has created a new challenge for families and educators: how to stay connected during the school day. To address this gap, ClassDojo for Districts today is introducing parent-student messaging, a new structured, school-managed communication channel coming in back-to-school 2026 that keeps families connected without bringing phones back into classrooms.

Beginning in back-to-school 2026, parents will be able to message their child directly on any school-issued device and view teacher-student conversations—with no student phone required.

As student phone bans take hold, districts are discovering an unintended consequence: when students lose access to their phones, families lose their most immediate line of communication. Front offices are fielding a surge of calls from families, forcing staff to track down students, relay messages across the building, and manage increased interruptions throughout the school day. District leaders are now facing a new question: how do we keep families connected in a phone-free school?

ClassDojo is already used in over 90% of U.S. schools, with millions of families opening the app each day to hear from teachers and stay up to date on school life. Parent-student messaging builds on that existing foundation with no new app to download, no new vendor to evaluate, and no adoption campaign required.

“Phone-free classrooms shouldn’t mean disconnected families,” said Jeff Buening, General Manager at ClassDojo. “As districts limit student phone access, many are seeing increased pressure on front offices to manage parent communication and relay messages throughout the day. Messaging between teachers, students, and parents gives district leaders a clear path forward by keeping communication open within school-managed guardrails. And for districts already using ClassDojo, there’s no need to add another vendor or ask families to download another app—the infrastructure, and the trust, are already in place.”

When launched for back-to-school 2026, the expanded messaging will:

• Allow families to send their child a message from the ClassDojo app
• Deliver messages to students on school-issued devices like Chromebooks
• Include teachers in every conversation
• Keep all messages logged and auditable within the district’s ClassDojo environment

“There is no peer-to-peer chat or social layer,” Buening added. “This is designed for direct communication between parents and their children, supporting phone-free policies without reintroducing classroom distraction.”

Interested districts can visit https://www.classdojo.com/districts/parent-student-messaging or contact their ClassDojo representative to learn more.

About ClassDojo

ClassDojo is on a mission to give every child an education they love. Used in 90% of U.S. schools, ClassDojo helps teachers and families build stronger school communities through everyday communication. ClassDojo for Districts is a unified communication and engagement platform that brings everyday classroom updates and districtwide messaging into one seamless experience—helping families feel connected, students stay engaged, and school culture grows stronger. It’s built with privacy at its core and available to districts at no additional cost.

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ParentSquare, the leading family engagement infrastructure for K–12 districts, today announced ParentSquare Intelligence, embedding AI and data intelligence across its unified school-home engagement platform to deliver actionable insights within the workflows districts use every day.

ParentSquare Intelligence analyzes communication activity, engagement patterns, attendance data, payment participation, and platform health signals to surface recommended actions directly within the ParentSquare interface. The capability operates within established K–12 privacy and policy guardrails and helps district leaders monitor communication reach, identify emerging attendance risks, improve financial participation, and maintain accurate family contact data across schools.

In the coming months, ParentSquare Intelligence will extend across communication, attendance, payments, and websites, embedding deeper insights and automation throughout the platform. New capabilities will enhance safety in two-way messaging, automate attendance workflows, surface early indicators of chronic absenteeism risk, strengthen financial and engagement reporting, improve translation accuracy across languages, provide instant, AI-powered answers to family questions on district websites, and enhance the account security posture with automated monitoring and insights. As these capabilities roll out, districts will gain clearer visibility and stronger tools to manage engagement across their communities.

“Intelligence requires context,” said Anupama Vaid, President and Founder of ParentSquare. “For 15 years, ParentSquare has powered districtwide communications, and we now support over 22 million students and families nationwide. That experience gives us the perspective to translate engagement patterns into meaningful insights. Along with that, our entrepreneurial spirit drives us to reimagine how engagement infrastructure should work for schools, going beyond simple incremental improvements.”

Contactability Benchmark, the first milestone in the rollout, is now live in the ParentSquare Admin dashboard. Contactability is defined as the ability to reach at least one verified caregiver for every student. The benchmark enables districts to compare verified reach against peer districts of similar size, identify gaps in contact data, and track progress toward 100 percent contactability. The typical ParentSquare district reaches 99.4% of families in their home language, a defining advantage of the platform and the foundational metric for true family engagement.

To learn more about ParentSquare Intelligence and how it extends across the ParentSquare platform, click here.

About ParentSquare

ParentSquare is the trusted leader in school-home engagement, helping K-12 districts nationwide reach every family with an award-winning, all-in-one communication platform. Reaching over 22 million students across the country, ParentSquare helps districts consolidate disconnected tools and outdated communication systems with personalized messaging, websites, forms, payments, and more—in one easy-to-use platform. With powerful features for achieving 100% contactability, two-way translation into 190+ languages, and purpose-built AI enhancements, ParentSquare empowers districts to invite every family to be involved in their student’s education, no matter their home language or the device they use.

Recognized for growth and innovation by Inc. 5000, GSV 150, and more, ParentSquare was founded in 2011 in Santa Barbara, California. Learn more at parentsquare.com.

SOURCE ParentSquare

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BALTIMORE, Md. — March 19, 2026 — Concentric Educational Solutions today announced the release of a new national white paper, Redefining the Attendance Paradigm – A Systemic Analysis of Chronic Absenteeism, Economic Impacts, and Human-Centered Interventions, authored by Ivory A. Toldson, Ph.D., Chief of Research at Concentric Educational Solutions.

Leveraging over 17,000 ethnographic home visits and deep national data analysis, Redefining the Attendance Paradigm uses provocative firsthand accounts and arresting infographics inspired by today’s graphic novels to visualize the stories of the thousands of families behind the numbers. This comprehensive report provides education leaders with a powerful new framework for combating absenteeism, fundamentally shifting the understanding of attendance from a simple compliance issue to an outcome of broader social, economic, and engagement factors.

Among the findings included in Redefining the Attendance Paradigm are: 

• Chronic absenteeism has stabilized at historically high levels, signaling a long-term engagement challenge rather than a short-term pandemic disruption.
• Systemic barriers—including health disparities, transportation gaps, family instability, and disengagement—are the primary drivers of absence, not student apathy or noncompliance.
• The economic and social costs of absenteeism are significant and compounding, affecting workforce readiness, district funding stability, and long-term student outcomes.
• Human-centered intervention models demonstrate measurable impact, including community schools, Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), ethnographic home visits, and AI-driven early warning systems.

“This is not a conventional white paper. It is a document written with the belief that true solutions will come from innovative, compassionate leaders who understand that a story is just as valuable as a number,” said author Ivory A. Toldson, Ph.D., Chief of Research at Concentric Educational Solutions. “Through Redefining the Attendance Paradigm, Concentric provides a foundational, evidence-based framework—backed by rigorous analysis and told through compelling, graphic-novel inspired infographics—that challenges all stakeholders to abandon outdated, punitive measures and embrace human-centered strategies for long-term student success.”

Redefining the Attendance Paradigm can be downloaded here.

To learn more about Concentric Educational Solutions’ approach to combating chronic absenteeism, visit the company’s website, follow the organization on X, or connect on LinkedIn.

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