One of the best ways to build trust with parents is through transparent communication about what’s happening on campus, the status of all things school-related, and how we’re meeting our students’ needs.

Parents are busy and don’t always have time to chase this information down on their own, so it’s up to district and school leaders to open up those clear lines of communication and then use them.

Technology is a great enabler for districts that want to do a better job in this area. By using our ParentSquare safe and secure platform for school-home communications, we’re getting rid of the many disparate solutions that our schools were using—including social media—and replacing them with a unified solution that everyone can use and rely on.

Here are four ways that we’re using technology to build trust with parents, keep them in the know and open even more lines of communication with them:

Get everyone on the same page. With five schools and 3,000 students on one campus, our district was using a mix of different applications for school-home communications.  The district had tried a couple of different mass communication platforms but found them to have limited features and not user friendly.  For example, you couldn’t cue up multiple messages to be delivered.  Individual teachers—who didn’t have access to these platforms—were using social media and programs like ClassDojo to communicate with families. None of these platforms “talked” to one another and finding coherence in this disjointed technology was basically impossible. Our new communications platform provides a cohesive, standardized form of communication across the district. 

Always use two-way communications. Giving parents a way to ask questions and get responses to them is very important, too. As districts, we can become too distant from our parents, who don’t feel like they can stay connected or get in touch with a teacher to find out what’s going on with their child. Or, they have no idea how to let a teacher know that they’re concerned about an issue. The trick is to come up with ways to make them more accessible and respect our teachers’ time, which is also very important. With our two-way school-home communications platform, there’s always the opportunity for open dialogue and sharing between teachers, staff, and parents.

Related:
How your communication strategies create safe schools
How to ensure clear communication with your paraprofessionals