Key factors:
Our district is extremely numerous, with 33 languages throughout our 13 faculties, in response to our newest house language survey knowledge. Once we have been in the course of the pandemic and all the pieces in training was turned on its head, we realized that we wanted a greater strategy to talk with dad and mom and caregivers rapidly and effectively.
Up till that time, we relied solely on our scholar data system to ship out textual content messages and automatic calls. We wished to centralize that course of, convey our golf equipment and athletics onto one platform, and make sure that it complied with the suitable use coverage that everybody indicators off on annually.
In the course of the pandemic, quite a lot of superintendents talked and one of many platforms mentioned brazenly and broadly inside our community was Remind Hub, so we jumped on board. When ParentSquare acquired Remind, we seized the chance emigrate to the ParentSquare platform. This transition has confirmed to be the most effective selections our district has made to boost school-home communications.
Listed below are six methods we’re utilizing that platform to spice up district engagement:
1. Actual-time language translation. The platform’s translation perform provides us full confidence that our incoming and outgoing messages are being translated precisely. Portuguese-speaking members of our group have been shocked by how correct and natural-sounding the automated voice messages are.
2. Improved accountability. There’s additionally an accountability issue in-built. We at all times know when our messages are obtained. Now, if somebody doesn’t obtain the message, we all know it, and we will straighten it out rapidly within the language that the recipient speaks.
3. Entry to knowledge, metrics and analytics. The answer’s dashboard notification historical past helps us distribute the best variety of communications–like figuring out when to make use of focused Good Alerts for dad or mum and guardian communication–versus sending correspondence to your entire college. We’re actually beginning to drill down and make the most of these particular instruments to ship the best messages to the best viewers on the proper time.
4. Enticing, partaking correspondence simplified. Along with the graceful transition from our unique communications platform to our present one, we actually just like the platform’s easy-to-use Studio Editor publication designer, which helps us create visually-appealing communications. It additionally affords wealthy formatting instruments and a scheduling function that helps a “set it and overlook it” course of. This permits us to shift our focus in direction of different work versus worrying about whether or not a message was despatched and obtained.
5. Straightforward dissemination of data. The Safe Paperwork function that’s out there on our platform takes the effort and time out of disseminating highschool accountability checks for practically 3,000 college students. Not having to make use of the normal interoffice mail or snail mail creates important price financial savings. We will securely e-mail dad and mom their little one’s state assessments and different varieties. The highschool is already doing that and now our center and elementary college principals are contemplating easy methods to leverage Safe Paperwork to be extra environment friendly.
6. Excessive contactability charges. Our district is at the moment at 99 p.c contactability throughout the 8,400 college students we serve and two of our faculties are at one hundred pc contactability. We’re at the moment on a mission to attain one hundred pc districtwide and are working with principals to get each scholar’s household into the system. Total, our district is basically happy with the excessive charges of contactability we’re seeing and we proceed to “peel again the onion” and uncover much more of the platform’s options.
Maximizing platform capabilities for long-term success
As we proceed to discover and optimize the capabilities of our unified school-home communications platform, we anticipate that we could finally consolidate instruments and scale back our prices even additional by eliminating different distributors. Our platform actually is a one-stop store–from the newsletters to Safe Paperwork to all the pieces in between.
As classroom academics, principals, and superintendents, we now have lots coming at us daily. Our plates don’t get smaller; they solely broaden, and time is the one factor we will’t get extra of. Our communications and engagement platform helps us maximize that restricted useful resource.