Schoharie to Go with ParentSquare to Better Communicate with Parents

By David Avitabile

SCHOHARIE - Schoharie school officials are switching to ParentSquare to improve communications with parents.

SCS Superintendent David Blanchard announced the change at the December 19 school board meeting. The district currently uses School Messenger.

Parent Square is a communication tool that the district will use to connect families to classroom teachers and events, Mr. Blanchard explained. "It can be used for mass notifications, classroom communications and interpretation services. This also enables better communication on the district website and a platform to distribute forms."

The district has signed a contract with ParentSquare and in the next few weeks, a system will be created for teachers and parents to communicate, Mr. Blanchard told school board members. The system will be introduced at the January faculty meeting. More information will be given to board members at their next meeting, along with strategies on how to use the new system.

ParentSquare, Mr. Blanchard added, allows teachers to get more information out of the classroom to parents and gives more ways for parents and teachers to communicate.

ParentSquare is a digital communications platform that is designed for education institutions and parents or guardians. The idea is to keep family contact clear and simple with direct lines of open dialogue.

According to its website, ParentSquare aims to create a home-school system to enhance the connection between schools, students, and parents. Parents can use ParentSquare to view various notifications from the school at any time, including but not limited to dates of school and class events, students' attendance status, etc. It is important to note that we expect parents to add a note and necessary explanation on ParentSquare about the reason why their child is absent.

In order to provide a better communication system for schools, ParentSquare has two-way group messaging and private conversation features. Allowing parents to be the first to contact the school when they need to, rather than relying on e-mails with poor immediacy, missed phone calls, and website updates that they never read. This means parents can send private messages to school staff (or other ParentSquare users) on ParentSquare at any time, even adding pictures or attachments.