We were lucky enough to catch up recently with Jennifer Straub, Principal of Francis T. Maloney High School and Susan Moore, Supervisor of Blended Learning for the Meriden Public School District in Meriden, Connecticut. They shared what happened when they rolled out ParentSquare almost overnight after the COVID-19 pandemic shifted schools to distance learning.
Q: What’s important to know about Meriden Public Schools and Maloney High School?
Susan and Jennifer: The Meriden Public School District serves a diverse population of 8,500 students, with approximately 75% minority, 15% English learners, and 77% eligible for free or reduced price meals. Francis T. Maloney High School is one of two high schools in the district. As a 1:1 district, all incoming freshmen are issued a Chromebook which they keep for their four years of high school.
Q: What made you choose to switch your district to ParentSquare starting in the 2019-20 school year?
Susan: We had a lot of different communications tools across the district. Some had better administrative oversight than others! We were concerned with student data privacy, especially in light of Connecticut’s student data privacy laws. Most importantly, we wanted to reach more students and families and promote positive home-school communications. Ease of use was also a big factor.
We discovered ParentSquare at an industry conference, and not only did we like the communications piece, we also liked how there were so many other tools built into the system, such as permission slips, sign-ups, payments, and automatic attendance notifications. We’re talking about consolidating probably 10 different tools that were being used across the district in different schools, and bringing them all under one umbrella.
Q: How did you approach the ParentSquare roll out for Maloney High?
Jennifer: In early March this year, we were informed that we’d be adopting a universal tool across all of our schools called ParentSquare! I understood that it provided many modalities, had a downloadable app and was going to increase our ability to connect with parents and families. At that point, we were using lots of different tools; we didn’t have anything streamlined or universal.
We set up our ParentSquare rollout plan for the school, which we figured would take a couple of months. March is a very busy time, so we thought we’d do a soft launch with some teachers, provide training, develop some super users, and then look to do a full rollout near the end of April. Eventually we’d communicate a hard cutoff date for other tools.
But within a week of making that plan, we had closed our schools! I remember that Thursday: we had a faculty meeting at 2pm where we learned we would not be closing, but by 5:30 that night we were closed! We quickly regrouped as a district over the weekend, and on Monday, we launched distance learning.
Q: How did school closures change your rollout plans for ParentSquare?
Jennifer: We decided to start with ParentSquare immediately: staff were directed by me to send their first message out in ParentSquare that Monday, to welcome their students and families to distance learning.
On the back end, Susan and her team at the district had already made sure that groups and classes were arranged, but teachers and staff had to use ParentSquare without a lot of training, preparation or transition.
Q: What were the results of switching to ParentSquare immediately, without training or transition time?
Jennifer: It was phenomenal, despite the speed! Ease of use was the number 1 reason. We were able to communicate very early on, very quickly, and very efficiently. That was great, because communication has been the key to success during this entire time of school closures.
The first week of remote learning, we decided as a school that we’d post assignments Sunday night and give students a week to get them done. Teachers use ParentSquare for class/group messaging and also for one-to-one interactions with parents and students (using the StudentSquare app for high school teacher-student communication, which is part of the platform).
By Week 2, I was getting compliments from parents: “Thank God you guys switched to ParentSquare; this is awesome!” I remember calling Susan one day to relay, “they think we’re geniuses!”
By Week 3, they were asking us to slow down a bit! You can imagine if your student has eight teachers, that can be a fair amount of messaging and updates.
We worked with teachers to adjust messaging, making sure they communicated with students first and looped in parents if necessary. We also helped parents customize their notification settings. Dad might want the daily summary notification, while Mom would like to get messages as they happen, and ParentSquare allows for this. We’re seeing a lot of appreciation and interactions.
At this moment, our secretaries are using it to reach out to scholarship winners. It’s just so quick!
Q: Did Teachers have any difficulties adopting ParentSquare?
Jennifer: Everyone picked it up quickly — it turned out to be a much easier transition that I’d imagined. To give you some context, I have a teacher who’s usually our top user, at ~250 posts per week! Our main dashboard shows our top message senders. This teacher was the last person I know to get a cellphone — he only got one about five years ago! Now he’s the person running the virtual National Honor Society, connecting digitally with his students, classes, and parents in a big way. That testifies to the intuitive nature of the tool and level of comfort teachers have with it.
I had the occasion to see some teachers in person recently, and we had a funny conversation about how “annoyed” they were with me for bringing yet another new tool for them to learn back in March…one more tech tool they needed to learn in the middle of the year, at an already busy and stressful time. They were hilarious as they described the overwhelmingly positive experiences they are having with ParentSquare. I wish you could have heard them.
One thing is abundantly clear: distance learning using an online platform such as Google Classroom was significantly more effective coupled with ParentSquare; teachers cannot imagine remote learning without also having this communication tool!
The craziest thing about it is that it’s a two-way communication tool. So while they shared stories about high schoolers writing to them all hours of the night, teachers were not the least bit put off by that, they only focused on how grateful they were for this new ability to reach every single one of their kids. One thing we learned about teenagers through distance learning is they sleep in and are up all night, so all of us had to make adjustments with that in mind.
Q: Has ParentSquare helped you reach all your parents, regardless of their circumstances?
Susan: As of right now, we are at 99.1% contactability, district wide. That means that we have working contact details for 99.1% of our parents through our mix of app, text, email and voice channels. The dashboards make it really easy to pinpoint families who are out of contact, so we can correct bad contact details or reach out as needed. Before ParentSquare, our previous tool had us at 84% contactability. That improvement alone is great news, not to mention being able to measure and track who’s responding, appreciating posts, messaging teachers, etc.
Jennifer: We have the bilingual education program at our school, with many English Learner parents. The instant translation tool helps us engage our EL families when we’re direct messaging, texting or emailing, and our school or class messages go out in their preferred language as well.
After school closures I was very worried that our attendance would drop. We were averaging 96% attendance, and I didn’t know, would we have 50%, or 70%? Well, we’ve even increased attendance! So we are reaching everyone. Yes, some students disengage at times, but we’re able to make contact with them through ParentSquare, individual phone calls and sometimes face to face. I’ve personally been on about 12 home visits. So we have found everybody.
Q: Does ParentSquare save time for you, your staff and your teachers?
Jennifer: It’s very productive and it’s faster to send messages than before, for sure. For example, when I used our previous system for robocall announcements to families, I’d put aside 30 minutes to do everything that it involved. Now I can just go into my phone and accomplish the same thing in less time.
But I’d say it doesn’t save me time overall because I’m communicating much more!
Q: What district-level functionality in ParentSquare do you appreciate?
Susan: One of many things I appreciate is the administrative dashboard: we have the ability to monitor usage and to support our schools — when a principal has a question, they can call me and we can help them out. A lot of the other tools we were using didn’t have administrative oversight, so the only action was to contact the vendor.
Q: How has using ParentSquare helped you as a school principal?
Jennifer: I may be an outlier, but we have a big community, and I feel a heavy responsibility to the community. In the evenings during my downtime, I used to scroll on Facebook and social media to see what was happening in our community. My new social media is ParentSquare! I love to “appreciate” my teachers’ posts and get a general sense of what’s happening with students, parents and teachers.
I see how loving my teachers are in their communications to students and parents right now. What they’re writing — the content, the tone, and framing — shows such a heartwarming level of care and concern!
We’ve seen that the struggle has gotten harder as the weeks have progressed. My thumb is on the pulse, and I don’t know if it would be if I didn’t have the ability to know what’s being communicated and what teachers are doing with their students. So it’s been really good.
Just last night a student reached out through ParentSquare, wanting to know how he gets his cap and gown, and he had some fees due. He got an answer right away from me and we even got his payment done over Venmo immediately. Everybody’s struggling, so if I can be accessible, it helps create connections and make it a little bit better.
