How to Use ParentSquare to Schedule Staff & Student COVID-19 Testing

As more students and educators head back to campus, we’re seeing many districts and schools hosting optional COVID-19 testing days for staff, students, and in some cases, even parents. Scheduling COVID tests through the ParentSquare platform is a quick, convenient, and secure way to help keep your school community safe and healthy.

If your district or school is looking for a way to facilitate COVID-19 testing appointments, our Appointment Sign Ups feature can help. Here’s how your school or district can schedule testing appointments with ParentSquare.

Generate Online Sign Ups

1. Generate Your Appointment Sign Up
2. Customize Your Appointment Sign Up
3. Set Up COVID-19 Testing Time Slots

Add Forms and Other Details

1. Add a Message to Recipients
2. Create a Permission Form With Electronic Signature
3. Send Your COVID-19 Testing Appointment Sign Up or Modify

In the ParentSquare platform, click on the Add-ons menu at the top, then click on Appointment Sign Ups to start generating your district or school’s COVID-19 testing Appointment Sign Up form.

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Start customizing your Appointment Sign Up by adding one or more days for testing, start and end times, and appointment duration. Keep the names of people who sign up private by checking the box ‘Hide names of parents who sign up’. Districts and schools may also find it convenient to use the option to schedule a recess and indicate breaks in between appointments to sanitize testing stations for the next person, if necessary.

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Give your Appointment Sign Up a descriptive title and indicate how many spots are available for each time slot. If you have multiple medical professionals administering the COVID-19 tests, you can schedule multiple people in time slots. Some districts or schools may find this convenient if they want to test multiple teachers or students at the same time.

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Decide who you are sending the COVID-19 testing Appointment Sign Up to, choose the intended recipients, who the message is coming from, and don’t forget to include a descriptive subject line!

The body of your message should include pertinent information for your COVID-19 testing process, like when, where, and who is eligible to get tested. You can also add supplemental links to provide recipients with more information on COVID-19 testing by highlighting your text and clicking the link icon in the text editor control panel above to insert a hyperlink.

In the top right, you’ll notice a ‘Who should see this?’ drop-down menu that gives you the option to allow staff, parents, or students* (if StudentSquare is enabled) to see the message. In this use case, staff would schedule their own appointment and parents would sign up on behalf of their child, so we recommend adding staff, parents, or both. Finally, you can translate your message into the languages your school supports.

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Does your district or school require participants to fill out a permission form? Click on Forms/Permission in the left sidebar to enable the use of a district or school template or create a new form. You can even require an electronic signature for added protection. In many cases, districts and schools are creating new forms for COVID-19 testing, as this is a new process for everyone.

Start by indicating when you need your form completed, then simply type your questions in each row, select the type of answer you require, like a yes or no, and indicate if a question is required to be answered. Participants cannot complete the sign up process until they have completed and signed their permission form. If you need to further customize your form, you can indicate the form requires an electronic signature, add attachments, or require student information (in this case, this is necessary to sign up students for a COVID-19 testing appointment).

Tip: Many districts and schools are hosting ongoing COVID-19 testing days, so it may not be necessary for people who are repeatedly being tested to fill out a permission form each time. When building your form, consider adding a disclaimer stating something like this:

By signing this form, you acknowledge its validity for 60 calendar days from the date signed.

You’re almost done! All ParentSquare users can customize and modify their Notification Preferences, so you can send at a user’s preferred time: instantly, or as a digest (all communications in one email at 6 p.m. each night). If issuing the COVID-19 testing Appointment Sign Up is urgent, you may consider sending instantly and overriding a user’s digest setting. Lastly, you can also choose to not notify recipients and only post your Appointment Sign Up on the ‘Posts’ page.

Once you select your notification options, you can preview your post before it goes live or click ‘Post Now’ to send your COVID-19 testing Appointment Sign Up to your intended recipients!

It might look something like this:

If at any time you need to make modifications to your Appointment Sign Up, send an update or reminder, or post to your social media accounts, locate the post and click the gear icon at the top right for a drop-down menu.

Creating Optional Parent COVID-19 Testing Appointment Sign Ups

If districts or schools would like to extend the opportunity for parents to sign up for COVID-19 testing, follow the instructions as listed above. However, in Step 4, only check Parents under ‘Who should see this?’ instead of Parents and Staff. And, of course, take into consideration your messaging and permission form requirements.

Using ParentSquare to set up a COVID-19 testing Appointment Sign Up is an easy way to streamline your district or school’s testing process. In just a few simple steps, you can create, customize, and post a sign up to help keep your school community safe and healthy.

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Why ParentSquare?

With a unified communications platform like ParentSquare, districts and schools have fully integrated forms, workflows, and other vital school services at their fingertips. What’s more, unlike other platforms and sign-up apps, districts and schools have complete administrative oversight, security, and reporting, which keeps students, parents, and staff safer.

ParentSquare not only enables effective communications but also helps foster deeper relationships with students and their families. Families know with ParentSquare, all the information they need is in one, convenient place. Parents don’t have to juggle multiple apps, emails, and paper forms. And when families know where to go for their district or school communications, it increases parent involvement. For administrators, they can rely on ParentSquare to provide trusted communications with powerful results.