How All School Staff Can Benefit from a Unified Communications Platform

Regular communications with families often is the responsibility of a few core groups: for example, teachers for classroom communications, principals for school communications, and superintendents or communications officers for district communications. But there are many other school staff with roles that require them to communicate with families on a regular or seasonal basis, such as student activity leaders, parent-teacher group leaders, operations staff, and a variety of other school office staff.

In a recent webinar, ParentSquare’s Jeremy Tignor and Nathan Ericson explored how all types of school staff communicate with families and how ParentSquare’s tools can support their unique communication needs.

Various Communications Roles and Responsibilities

The broader school staff with communications needs encompasses all the leaders, coaches, coordinators, and support staff other than teachers, principals, superintendents, and communications officers. While these staff members may communicate with families less often—or even only on a seasonal basis—direct communications with families are necessary to help their teams, extracurricular activities, groups, and services run smoothly. Here are some examples of school staff and groups that need to reach out to families:

• Student Activity and Academics Leaders: Athletic coaches, theater and music directors, career pathway advisors, extracurricular and club leaders, tutors, librarians, academic support coaches
• Community Groups: Fundraising groups, PTOs/PTAs, booster and alumni groups, community partners, volunteers
• Operations Staff: Transportation, food service, facilities, tech support
• School Office Staff: Family engagement coordinators, counselors, registrar and attendance staff, assistant principals

Single-Task Tools Are Less Efficient 

School staff frequently choose to communicate with students and families through single-task tools which are often disjointed and uncoordinated. Some examples include collecting emails and phone numbers using paper or free apps (such as Google Forms), and then using standalone texting services and/or mass email platforms. While these tools serve the minimum communications needs of school staff and groups, they typically require significant management to collect and import all contact information and constant involvement to disseminate all necessary information to families.

Multi-Purpose Platforms Serve All School Staff

Having a single, unified platform for all school staff provides the most efficient way to achieve regular communications that keep families engaged. It also minimizes the administrative and data management tasks school staff must complete to update contacts, maintain accurate records, and more.

ParentSquare includes three specific tools that help meet the ever-expanding communications needs of a broad variety of school staff:

1. Templates: By utilizing templates, school or district communications leaders can create a visual brand for newsletters and other communications no matter which staff members use them. Consistent branding makes it easy for families to visually recognize important communications from all school staff. Plus, templates give school staff a framework for sharing information with families, guiding them to ensure regular, clear, and comprehensive communications.
2. Community Groups: The Community Groups feature can be used by many different staff and organizations, from coaches and music and theater program directors to athletic booster clubs and alumni groups, PTA/PTO groups, and more. By engaging with these external stakeholders through the ParentSquare platform, Community Groups reduces the need for separate email distribution services. Multiple school staff or administrators can have ownership of the group to communicate with families and manage group tasks. Group administrators are able to allow people to sign up directly on a webpage for group updates, rather than requiring an administrator to enter contact information manually.
3. Personalized Auto Notices: Automatic notices to parents and guardians can be created for a number of needs, including lunch balances, fundraisers, upcoming payments, or attendance. These personalized notifications allow for communications across email, text, and voice messages. Auto notices support school staff by decreasing the administrative and management requirements associated with their roles.

This conversation also addressed two other useful tools that can help meet the communication needs of many school staff members: two-way language translation and secure document delivery. To view and listen to the conversation in its entirety, check out the webinar recording here.