3 reasons to spend ESSER funds on school-home communications

Key points:

  • School-home communication is critical in boosting attendance and decreasing absenteeism
  • A thoughtful school communication plan is as important to good schooling as a great teacher
  • See related article: 5 ways video improves school-home communication

When you think about Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, do you think “HVAC?”

While ESSER funds were vital for making schools safer during the pandemic, they cover more than infrastructure. The true goal of ESSER funding is learning recovery, and the heart of learning recovery is attendance.…Read More

ParentSquare Releases Back-to-School Resources, Including Updated Checklist for Successful Home-School Communications

Santa Barbara, CA — 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.…Read More

Rise Vision Named “Student Safety Solution Provider of The Year” in 2023 EdTech Breakthrough Awards Program

(June 08, 2023) –– Rise Vision, the #1 digital signage software solution for schools, announced that it has been named “Student Safety Solution Provider of The Year” in the 5th annual EdTech Breakthrough Awards program conducted by EdTech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies and solutions in the global educational technology market.

Rise Vision helps schools improve communication and safety, increase student involvement, celebrate student achievements, and create a positive school culture. Rise Vision provides easy to use technology, which educators are able to use to manage communications across districts.

Rise Vision offers over 500+ professionally designed, animated, and customizable templates. In addition, through popular integrations, users are able to automatically pull content from services like Google Slides, Canva, Twitter, and more.…Read More

CAE and Pearson Partner to Bring Critical Thinking Assessment to Secondary Education Students

NEW YORK (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Council for Aid to Education, Inc. (CAE), a leader in designing innovative performance tasks for measurement and instruction of higher order skills, today announced the immediate availability of its College and Career Readiness Assessment (CCRA+) through a non-exclusive partnership with Pearson [FTSE: PSON.L], the world’s leading learning company. Pearson will resell CCRA+ as part of its Pearson Assessment for Learning Suite (PALS).

Designed for students in grades six through 12, CCRA+ assesses critical thinking, problem solving and written communications – essential skills that are predictive of positive academic and career success. These skills are highlighted in Portraits of a Graduate profiles, yet most states and districts do not have an effective and reliable approach to measure these skills.

“CAE is proud to partner with Pearson to help schools and districts access our assessment tools to support student growth,” said Bob Yayac, president and CEO, CAE. “While more than 125 districts have developed or are developing a Portrait of a Graduate, our research and conversations indicate most have not identified how they will measure these skills in an objective, consistent and standardized manner. CCRA+ addresses this important need.”…Read More

ParentSquare Announces 2023-24 Advisory Council Members 

Santa Barbara, CA — ParentSquare Inc., the leading provider of school-home community engagement solutions for K-12, today announced the members of its 2023-24 ParentSquare Advisory Council. The Advisory Council members help inform the company’s future development plans for the ParentSquare platform and serve as a peer-to-peer forum for discussing best practices and pressing issues in school communications and family engagement.

The ParentSquare Advisory Council is an invitation-only group, comprised of K-12 communications, technology, and administrative leaders who use ParentSquare. The size of the council has grown from 14 members in the 2022-23 academic year to 18 members for the coming year. New and returning members include:

●      Jason Borgen, Chief Technology Officer for Santa Cruz County Office of Education (Calif.)…Read More

Carousel Cloud Scales with Indianapolis School District for K-12 Communications

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA The Metropolitan School District (MSD) of Washington Township in Indianapolis is midway through a district-wide Carousel Cloud digital signage network deployment that will eventually reach more than 11,500 students and staff in eight elementary schools, three middle schools and one high school plus a career and technical center. The district reports 70 screens are live today with Carousel digital signage content coming from multiple contributors per school, with approximately 150 screens expected upon completion.

The Carousel Cloud deployment coincides with a district-wide remodeling project that includes the school district’s Central Campus, home to North Central High School, Northview Middle School and the J Everett Light Career Center. The district has adopted a “one school at a time” rollout strategy that helps its technology specialists effectively train staff before using the system. 

“We wanted to implement a digital signage network that invites many contributors, and that means the system has to be easy to learn and easy to use,” said Matthew Whitt, Audio Video Specialist – Technology, MSD of Washington Township. “We also wanted software that could be flexible for the needs of different education levels. With Carousel, each grade has a unique channel with its own voice.”…Read More

6 ways to transform district communications with tech

When I joined our district in 2021, I was asked to review its overall communications and ensure that we were communicating effectively both with our families and with the surrounding community. Across our 13 schools, it was immediately apparent that our current platform wasn’t meeting expectations.

That platform didn’t have the features and resources we needed to be able to reach our communication goals. We started looking for a better option by researching online and speaking with other districts about what they were using.

Through that exercise, we learned about ParentSquare and decided to implement it. Here are six ways that our new approach to communications has transformed our district:…Read More

3 tips for confusion-free inclement weather communications

Even if the old spoon under the pillow trick hasn’t worked for the students in your district yet, it doesn’t mean it won’t be your turn next!

No matter how well prepared you are, weather cancellations can be cause for confusion. It’s worth taking a few extra precautions so your families know exactly what the story is.

Here are a few simple tips districts can follow to make sure weather communication messages are reaching home without causing confusion:…Read More

In cybersecurity, balancing vigilance with access

Cybersecurity is at the forefront of IT issues to be addressed over the next year. Nearly every list of major IT or educational technology issues for 2023 includes the need to further harden educational systems and infrastructure.

More than 20 educational organizations–including AASA, the American Association of School Administrators (the primary superintendents’ association)–have asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to expand E-rate to cover advanced firewall technology to support protection from denial of service (DOS), improve virtual private network (VLN) access, and similar upgrades. The FCC is currently soliciting public input on the potential change here until February 13, 2023.

It is easy to understand the need for increased cybersecurity safeguards. In the first half of 2022, at least 34 major cyberattacks were made against schools. Cybercrime cost more than $6.9 billion in 2021. The evening news commonly reports on cyberattacks against pipelines, government systems, and other vital services. Due diligence in considering ways to harden cyber targets and protect student and institutional data is essential and to not do so in today’s environment would probably be willfully negligent. However, there is a need for balancing security with usability.…Read More