As a school-home communication platform, we understand how important it is for schools to connect with families. However, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating an engaged and connected school community. School communications leaders must find ways to empower students, teachers, staff, and school leaders to connect with one another in order to create—and maintain—strong bonds with every family.
To discover how different schools approach creating bonds with families, we hosted a webinar with a panel of school communications leaders: Joshua Wucher, Kirsten Fitterer, and Krista J. Stockman. These communications experts had a conversation about what it takes to engage families across a variety of different districts and how ParentSquare has been integral to reach these goals in their districts
All three of our panelists come from schools that have diverse language preferences among families. Krista’s district is the largest district in Indiana, and families speak more than 70 languages. In Kirsten’s district, one-third of students speak Spanish-only at home, and the district has Washington’s second largest Latinx majority. Joshua’s district is based on a community schools model, providing wraparound services to meet the needs of a school body that is 100% qualified for free breakfast and lunch.
Establishing a Culture That Encourages Strong Bonds
The foundation of a connected school community is the establishment of a culture that encourages, supports, and maintains strong bonds between all stakeholders.
Kirsten’s district has a slogan that sums up this intention well: “Somos Uno” or “We Are One.” For districts with a wide variety of family cultures and languages, having access to direct communications in families’ preferred language is a vital part of establishing these bonds.
Joshua noted that schools in his district are neighborhood hubs that bring together academics, youth development, and family and community engagement—with an infusion of health and social services to support the whole child. With all of these factors involved, his district creates individualized family engagement plans that are centered on campus-specific needs.
For Krista’s district, it’s important that their school culture stands out and, in that pursuit, they are dedicated to creating a climate of all being welcome in their schools. With many private and charter options around her district, she’s made a focus on customer service, always reaching out for feedback, and maintaining school community connections to ensure families’ needs are met.
Who Creates School Community Connections?
Creating strong bonds in your school community is a group effort, and many different stakeholders play a part in this process. These people help to establish the school culture, connect with families, and grow and maintain bonds.
In Joshua’s school district, there is a wide range of people involved in engaging and connecting with families, such as community support services teams, academic and attendance support teams, and social and emotional support teams. Offering other services like housing support, adult education, and employment support for parents and guardians helps to strengthen bonds both in and outside of school and reminds families that their school community is there to lift them up when they need assistance.
“It’s about creating this hub in your community that parents know if something is happening or if they need support, they can turn to the school—even beyond academics.” —Krista
Krista’s district has created a family and community engagement center, which offers a variety of services to support families—even before students are enrolled. Not only does this engagement center help identify and address any support services students will need in school, but it also provides health exams and vaccinations to streamline the enrollment process for families. Offering this line of support at the onset of the school-family relationship communicates to families that they are joining a community that will always be there to support them.
Kirsten noted that in her district, the parent teacher organizations are very strong. While these organizations are not district-managed, the partnerships they have formed are integral to creating school community connections. Additionally, due to the district’s large population of homeless and displaced students, the district has McKinney-Vento liaisons to support these students as they experience displacement. When possible, creating roles to support specific groups of students is a useful way to directly address community challenges and strengthen community bonds.
Rebuilding Bonds When They’re Damaged or Lost
Krista said it best: It’s all about transparency. Whether administrators need to bring in families, implement restorative practices, or mediate conversations when there are issues in the community, being as transparent as possible is always key.
Creating strong bonds in your school community is an essential part of supporting students, families, and educators. This takes great thought and care and requires communications staff to empower all stakeholders with the right tools, create pathways to successful communication, and respond to the unique needs of their school.
How Does ParentSquare Support School Community Bonds?
Having a communication platform can be a powerful tool to support establishing and maintaining connections in your school community. ParentSquare offers tools for communication and community management all on one unified platform, plus two-way translation makes communications accessible to a diverse school community.
For Kirsten and Krista, this two-way translation is a huge benefit to schools and families, allowing families who don’t speak English an opportunity to still connect with English-speaking teachers, staff, and administrators directly.
Kirsten and Joshua both highlighted how important it is that ParentSquare empowers teachers to communicate with families, deliver progress reports, and also connect with principals, supporting all levels of communication in one unified platform and simplifying how teachers connect. This enables more conversations and impacts student progress every day.
One thing that Krista also noted, however, was that using having a digital platform to get communication out quickly is beneficial in so many ways, but at the end of the day, you still sometimes need to pick up the phone and talk to parents and guardians directly, to really solidify t hose connections.
To view the conversation in its entirety, check out the webinar recording here.
About ParentSquare
ParentSquare is relied upon by millions of educators and families in 48 states for unified, effective school communications. ParentSquare provides parent engagement tools that work from the district office to the individual classroom, supported by powerful metrics and reporting. ParentSquare’s technology platform features extensive integrations with student information and other critical administrative systems, translation to more than 100 languages, and app, email, text, voice, and web portal access for equitable communication. ParentSquare (http://www.parentsquare.com), founded in 2011, is based in Santa Barbara, CA.
