Written by Zareena Zaidi
Mass communication tools are becoming better than ever with new technology. Now that nearly every family has a mobile phone, it’s becoming easier to reach parents where they are (thank you mass texting capabilities!).
Nonetheless, mass communication tools are still just delivering one-way notifications. Inform parents, they do. Engage parents, they do not. But you don’t need to be Yoda or harness the power of the force to truly engage your parent community. What you need is two-way communication!
Many teachers already know this — they know that classroom communication requires a deeper, collaborative connection with parents and they are adopting their own tools. But this can become an overhead for the district, as these tools often lack the privacy checks and oversight needed in the K12 environment.
Two-way communication is here to stay. So why not harness its power? Augment your one-way mass notification tool with two-way communication — reduce risk and keep teachers happy.
We’ve compiled our top four questions to consider as you think about what a district-wide communication tool needs.
1. Does It Deliver Administrative Oversight?
Although it’s great teachers are being proactive with their communication, you’re struck with new issues: lack of visibility, inability to have an archive of everything under one umbrella, growing privacy concerns with student and parent contact data, and no consistency in your school communication. Make sure you use a platform that has complete oversight throughout — including direct messages sent via phones — so you will always be able to have one place for all school communication within the district.
Here at ParentSquare, we offer one unified platform for all school communication with complete administrative visibility — including everyday classroom communication posts, comments from parents, direct messages between teachers, parents and students, as well as group messages — providing an archive for all school communication under one umbrella.
2. Is It Equitable?
As schools and districts move towards greater equity, they are adopting mass notification tools that deliver notifications to families in their preferred language, which is such a game-changer! However, many teachers are still hesitant to reach out to their ELL families because of language barriers. With a tool that supports live, two-way translation, teachers can easily and clearly engage in meaningful dialogue with ELL families.
At ParentSquare, we are fully dedicated to equitable parent engagement. Our real-time two-way translation feature uses context-driven translation for higher accuracy, and can translate into 100+ languages.
3. Is It Secure and Private?
How does the platform collect and maintain personal identifiable information and contact data? Some tools just require a “link” which can be shared with anyone in the public. When teachers don’t have a tool to use, they may default to google forms — and may unwittingly expose personal identifiable information in the process. Some free classroom communication apps even sell their contact data or include third-party ads. 🙁
How does the platform protect against data breaches and hacks? Recently a few K12 edtech platforms experienced breaches that affected their communities. Here at ParentSquare, security and privacy are of the utmost importance. Our security measures include adherence to industry-leading security protocols for data transfer, data storage, authentication, and encryption, and we follow NIST Cybersecurity Framework best practices to secure critical infrastructure and operations.
ParentSquare also holds iKeepSafe certification for COPPA Safe Harbor, FERPA, and California Student Data Privacy, meaning that our security measures have been proactively and independently assessed by iKeepSafe, an experienced privacy protection organization.
4. Does It Offer a One-Stop Parent Platform, Even Beyond Two-Way Communication?
With the increasing need for a two-way communication system with oversight, districts are turning to platforms that can provide both mass notifications for administrators and two-way communication for teachers and schools, but schools need much more than that. Save your district money, save your parents the hassle of signing onto multiple different platforms, and save teachers time by adopting one platform that can do it all.
From ParentSquare’s start many years ago, the ParentSquare platform is and has always been built for school- and district-wide communication. In addition to mass notifications and two-way communication, we provide plenty of other tools within the same platform, including: forms and permission slips, parent teacher conference sign-ups, secure document delivery for items like report cards, attendance and lunch balance notifications, invoices and payments, grades and assignments, calendar/RSVP, directory, polls, social media and webshare, personalized notices and more!
Districts are doing a great job with mass notification tools, but as teachers adopt their own two-way communication tools, it’s time to augment your mass and two-way communication under one unified platform. Administrators will be happy with one place for all communication with oversight throughout. Teachers will be happy with continued two-way communication (as long as it is still just as powerful and intuitive as before). Parents will be happy with just one login for everything, so information doesn’t fall between the cracks from various channels.
Learn more to decide for yourself if ParentSquare is right for your school or district.
