The summer break gives district and school administrators time to evaluate the efficacy of the approaches they used in the previous academic year and create new strategies as needed. To help educators increase the support that both students and teachers receive from family engagement, ParentSquare, the award-winning unified school-home engagement platform for K12 education, has compiled resources for improving school-home communications in the upcoming school year.
The primary resource is the company’s updated “Back-to-School Checklist For Successful School-Home Communications,” a comprehensive list for organizing and implementing critical tasks. Based on ParentSquare’s experience of working with thousands of schools and districts for more than a decade, the checklist includes:
● 4 steps to help readers take stock of what’s working and where to improve
● 5 ways to benchmark your processes and plans against K12 best practices
● 6 items to include in your annual communications plan
● 6 set-up or administrative tasks
● 7 key launch activities to start your year off right
The checklist also includes a “Other Back-to-School Tasks” section where users can add items that are specific to their school or district.
“We’ve made the checklist available as both a PDF and an interactive Google Sheet,” ParentSquare President and Founder Anupama Vaid said. “We’ve also added relevant resources and tools to the checklist items that includes our own tools and resources as well as external ones where relevant. For example, beside the checklist item for completing a retrospective on what did and didn’t work, we added a link to ConceptBoard retrospective templates.”
ParentSquare has created a second checklist that focuses on family engagement. Titled “7 Ways to Maximize Family Engagement When K12 Goes Back-to-School,” this checklist is organized into seven categories, each containing three or four task items:
- Treating families as partners at every level
- Consolidating tools and reducing time-consuming tasks
- Reaching families where they already are (e.g., preferred languages and channels)
- Creating a welcoming environment for families
- Collaborating with the community
- Training families, staff and students before school starts
- Supporting families through non-school-related challenges
In addition, ParentSquare has compiled a comprehensive selection blog posts that provide back-to-school communications advice and guidance for educators at specific school and district levels:
● 8 Tips for School Technology Leaders Preparing for a Successful New School Year
● Effective Back-to-School Communication: Tips and Strategies for Teachers
● School Communications Leaders: Tips for Managing Time and Mental Health During Back-to-School Season
● Welcoming Staff Back to School: 6 Strategies for Superintendents
“Education leaders can use the tips from the relevant blog posts and items from the family engagement checklist to round out the ‘Other Back-to-School Tasks’ section in the comprehensive ‘Back-to-School Checklist’ offering,” added Vaid. “But they could also opt to keep the two checklists separate or use the resources in some other way that works for them. Our goal is to help educators feel assured that nothing is falling through the cracks and that they’ll be starting the new school year with their best foot forward.”
About ParentSquare™
ParentSquare is the leading provider of modern family and community engagement solutions for K-12 schools. Millions of educators and families in 49 states rely on the multipurpose unified platform that includes mass notifications, classroom communications, school websites, and other communication-based services, all supported by visual dashboards. ParentSquare's technology platform features comprehensive integrations with school administrative systems, translation to more than 100 languages, and app, email, text, voice, and web portal access for equitable communication. Founded in 2011, the company is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA. Learn more at https://www.parentsquare.com.
