What this Superintendent Did to Gain Oversight
If you’ve ever felt like you had no oversight into parent communication in your district, you aren’t alone. Many school districts struggle to execute their strategic plan when it comes to communication. That’s because for all the many tools currently in your toolbox (and the toolbox of every other person in the district who communicates with parents) it’s likely that none of them were designed for strategic communication, and most importantly, building and measuring relationships with the families in your community.
In education today, there is no shortage of ways to share information with other human beings. Whether it’s social media or your SIS, nearly every tool offers some form of messaging. While those forms of communication may seem handy at the moment, if every teacher is using a different tool every time they talk to a parent, administrators are left with no real idea of how often parents are being contacted, if the conversations were productive, professional–or what was said.
Lumpkin County School District in northern Georgia was experiencing this issue. They began searching for district communication options that would provide true administrator oversight. Superintendent Dr. Rob Brown wanted to set his team up for meaningful, proactive conversations with families that also included a way for him to see that they are happening.
“Parents send us the most important piece of their lives each day: their children,” he says. “We need parents to see our schools as their partner in, not the owner of, their child’s education.”
Dr. Brown’s desire for quantifiable parent communication drove an in-depth evaluation of many K12 communication tools. The team at Lumpkin vetted a number of options down to three finalists; Remind Enterprise, Kinvolved, and SchoolStatus. At the end of the process, SchoolStatus beat out the competition. “What we found was that SchoolStatus would provide that solution with the oversight and the measurements that we were looking for,” states Director of Community Engagement, Jason Lemley.
K-12 Communication Solutions Comparison Chart
SchoolStatus approaches communication differently than other solutions on the market. Not only are calls, texts, emails, and video chats automatically logged and recorded—a huge win for teachers who are sick of manual call logs—but all communication records are accessible to leadership and informed by integrated student data. Superintendents can view metrics like text frequency by school, number of calls by teacher, or even identify at-risk students and how many times their parents have been contacted. From understanding family dynamics to ensuring important conversations are compliant, SchoolStatus supports your goal-oriented parent communication strategy.
“All relationships need effective, frequent communication to thrive,” good advice from Superintendent Dr. Rob Brown. Now, with SchoolStatus, Lumpkin County School District will continue to do just that.
Learn more about Lumpkin County School District’s experience with SchoolStatus. Read the full case study here.
