"We live in a world of 24/7 access to news and information, and parents expect nothing less from their local schools, especially when it comes to the safety of their children," said Mr. Terry L. Davis, Superintendent of Madison County Schools. Parent notification systems not only allow districts to provide parents with fast, accurate information in an emergency, but will also help them build a strong home-school relationship over time. Studies show that when schools and families are connected, a special trust develops and student achievement benefits. Notification tools can do more than alert the school community to an emergency. New systems are cultivating parental involvement by sending home daily reports on students' behavior, attendance, and performance. During this seminar, we heared from two districts who have seen how useful parent notification systems really are, and told of their the success from using them! If your district has been looking into investing in a parent notification system, recently invested in one, or is looking for ways to fully utilize the one you have, this seminar contained valuable information. Here is a short re-cap on their presentation. The link for the full presentation is available at the end of this article.

Parent Notification Systems...It's Not Just a Telephone
Katrina Fey, NCLB and Federal Programs Coordinator at Glades County School District in Florida, spoke on the importance of having a parent notification system. They are a smaller district of only 1200 students, but they have seen and heard the impact that Blackboard Connect (formerly ConnectEd), the parent notification system they use, has had on parents, students, and staff. There are a wide array of tools districts can use to communicate with parents. On-line automated calling system, backpack letter, United States Post Office, marquee and newspaper announcement are some of the common ones. The most important thing a district can do is determine what type of communication form is the best to reach parents. The parent notification system they use offers all of these features: Attendance phone calls, Emergency notification school-/district-wide,Teacher notification to parents, and any type of notification desired. They decided this was the best thing for their district.

Once you decide to use a notification system, it is very important to find one that allows you to track who and when people are receiving the messages you are sending. Keep track of messages sent and see who is really benefiting from having this system in place. Take note how things like attendance and lunch money income have increased since you started using the system. An excellent way to track how the new system is viewed by all its users, is to hold surveys. Some programs come with this feature automatically. Katrina believes you will receive positive feedback as they did. Their end of year survey yielded that 8% of respondents strongly agreed that the BlackBoard Connect system was beneficial and helpful. Most of the parent notification systems on the market, make it pretty simple to upload, change, and update new data as you use it through the years. Katrina highly recommends getting a system in place, if you don't already.

Aiming Your Message at the Right Target
For this presentation, three representatives from the Chesterfield County Public School system, shared with us the success they experienced when using ParentLink for their parent notification system. Tim Bullis, Director of Community Relations, began by giving us the definition of the mission of Chesterfield County Public Schools. "To work in partnership with students, families and the community to ensure that each student acquires the knowledge, skills and core values necessary to achieve personal success and to enrich the community." He emphasized how important it is in a district to have Superintendents and School Boards be on board completely when it comes to creating the best form of communication. The NSPRA conducted an audit at Chesterfield and found that residents support and respect public education, and that parents want to know more about what is going on in their child's school. Chesterfield responded to this audit by creating a strategic communication plan to enhance communication efforts and effectiveness with internal audience, enhance school-parent communication, and enhance communication efforts and effectiveness with external audience. They hoped by doing this, citizens would be able to see the positive effects they were making in the school district.

Shawn Smith, the Assistant Director of Community Relations, then covered the goals they would achieve by using ParentLink. They wanted to notifying parents of an emergency, notifying parents of a child’s absence, and provide parents with information about their child’s school, performance, etc. Here were some of the challenges they ran across: Educating parents that these calls contain important messages, convincing principals that parents won’t get “burned out” by messages, and managing the number of messages sent. They use the system to send targeted messages such as: Progress reports, homework due by class, Important assessments by class, and disciplinary action (lunch detention, Saturday school, bad behavior for substitute, etc.).

Sarah Fraher, the Principal at Elizabeth Davis Middle School, next talked about the importance of being able to send targeted group messages, and how to gauge your success.

Note: Sorry, no recording of this presentation is available.
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