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communications

The Illinois Learning Technology Purchase Program Selects ParentSquare as a Vendor Partner for School-Home Communications

Santa Barbara, CA — Dec. 15, 2021— ParentSquare, the award-winning unified school-home communications platform for K-12 education, has been named a vendor partner by the Illinois Learning Technology Purchase Program (ILTPP).

The ILTPP is a statewide cooperative created by Illinois’ Learning Technology Center (LTC), Regional Offices of Education (ROE), and Intermediate Service Centers (ISC) in 1998. Its goal is to provide a voluntary purchasing program that combines the purchasing power of Illinois school districts and other eligible educational entities to offer competitive pricing on technology products and services.

Approved vendors undergo a rigorous evaluation before obtaining ILTPP’s approval for partnership. The program researches the reliability of each vendor by contacting three educational facilities that have purchased their products within the last year. In addition, an advisory committee consisting of LTC, ROE, and ISC directors and Illinois State Board of Education officials assesses the vendors’ pricing and products.…Read More

California’s Oakland USD Adopts Aeries Communications Powered by ParentSquare to Enhance School-Home Engagement Efforts

Santa Barbara, CA—Nov. 17, 2021—Aeries Communications—the unified school-home communications platform powered by ParentSquare for the Aeries® Student Information System (SIS)—is now providing all-in-one, secure, two-way communications for the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). The platform enables the district to engage all students’ families—regardless of language or socioeconomic barriers—with a single, parent-centric communications platform.

OUSD relies on the Aeries SIS as its central database for student information. With 26 years of experience working with K-12 districts, Aeries SIS allows schools to power everything from daily operations to student portals to communication and fundraising. The district’s adoption of Aeries Communications powered by ParentSquare began when OUSD piloted the platform’s COVID-19 health screening tool at three school sites to quickly and efficiently monitor the daily health status of students and staff. Following the successful pilot program, the district expanded the health monitoring tool to include all its staff and 35,000 students in 80 schools.

Today, OUSD has consolidated and streamlined all of their communication and parent engagement activities under the Aeries Communications powered by ParentSquare platform, which offers all the communication tools that district leaders need, including alerts, website and social media sharing capabilities, newsletters, secure student-specific document delivery, automated attendance notices and more. Communications can be translated into more than 100 languages, and app, email, text, voice, and web portal access help foster more equitable communication across the district.…Read More

5 ways to foster family engagement in your district

The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent shift to virtual and hybrid learning left families and educators with important discoveries, including the realization that family engagement and home-school communication are critical to student success.

One-way communication falls flat, and families must be engaged with schools in order for schools to create and maintain equitable learning environments for students, says Mahnaz R. Charania, PhD, a senior research fellow at the Christensen Institute and author of a new report about reimagining family engagement. This engagement requires trust and reciprocity–merely sending information home in student backpacks and out in electronic communications is ineffective.

Communication does not equal connection. There do exist a number of programs and technology tools to help schools harness the “untapped potential of families.” When integrated within robust family engagement strategies, these programs and tools serve to establish families and educators as partners in supporting students and student success.…Read More

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SchoolStatus Acquires Operoo; Accelerates Vision to Build World’s Leading Unified K-12 Analytics, Communications, and Workflow Platform

RIDGELAND, Miss., Oct. 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — SchoolStatus, a leading provider of an education communications platform designed to improve student outcomes through data and parent engagement, announced today the acquisition of Operoo, a privately-held, Australia-based company that provides one of the most widely-used cloud-based solutions for online school forms, medical data, and trip management.

SchoolStatus will acquire Operoo in its entirety, fully incorporating Operoo’s operations, technology, and team into SchoolStatus, including 27 employees and over a thousand customers in Australia, Europe, and North America. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Operoo enables thousands of schools, clubs, and associations around the world to automate, manage, and track operational tasks from a single cloud-based platform. The company offers digital workflows for a range of routine processes – which are often manual, disconnected and paper-based – including distributing and collecting parental consent, payments, medical and emergency information, student registration, staff onboarding, policy management, incident reporting, activity and group management, paperless school trips, and more. …Read More

New ParentSquare Community Groups Feature Helps Districts and Schools Extend Reach to Community Members

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. SEPT. 24, 2021—Community engagement is an important part of K-12 education. To make it quick and easy for districts and schools to reach all interested community members, ParentSquare Inc., provider of the premier unified school-home engagement platform for K-12, today announces a new Community Groups feature.

Community Groups allows interested community members to sign up for various communications offered by districts and schools. Community Groups web pages can be enabled at the district or school level, or both. With this feature, family and community members who are not parents, guardians, students, or staff can sign up for communications in as many categories offered by the school or district as they desire. In addition to making it easier to communicate with a wider audience, this new feature reduces the need for schools or districts to subscribe to a separate mass email distribution service, saving staff time and money by having all contacts and communications in one place with ParentSquare.

With Community Groups, districts and schools can extend their reach to generate greater awareness and involvement. Community members can now keep up with activities and announcements based on their interests, such as fundraisers, afterschool programs, sporting or alumni events. When combined with ParentSquare’s existing social media and website sharing capabilities, community contact is multiplied.…Read More

Vector Solutions Adds Silent Panic Alarm Feature to its LiveSafe Tip Reporting and Safety Communications Platform for Schools

Tampa, FL – September 24, 2021 – The Washington Post reported 14 school shootings between March and June 2021 despite pandemic-related school closures. As more classrooms re-open for in-person instruction, student safety and mental health remain top concerns.  To help in situations where there is an immediate emergency, Vector Solutions,  the leading provider of training and software solutions to help schools make their operations and communities safer, smarter and better, has updated its Vector LiveSafe Tip Reporting and Safety Communications Platform to add a silent panic alarm feature, allowing users to immediately report emergencies directly to authorities. The panic alarm helps schools meet the recommendations in Alyssa’s Law, named after Alyssa Alhadeff, one of the 17 victims killed during the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. The law requires schools to implement mobile panic alarms that go directly to law enforcement in case of immediate emergencies such as an active shooter situation.

“Keeping schools and students safe requires constant vigilance and technology necessary for administrators, staff and students to communicate emergencies immediately, and to the right people,” said Vector Solutions CEO Marc Scheipe. “Our Vector LiveSafe platform and new silent panic alarm feature help schools do this and support our mission of helping to make schools and communities safer, smarter, and better.”

Vector LiveSafe is an advanced tip reporting and safety communication platform for organizations, including schools. Students can quickly report safety concerns directly through their Vector LiveSafe smartphone app – anything from bullying, to concerns about a friend or classmate’s mental health, to an emergency situation. The new silent panic alarm feature in the app allows the user, with one touch, to send an alert to law enforcement. It provides the user’s location without them having to type or say anything.…Read More

ParentSquare Celebrates 10th Anniversary of Unifying School-Home Communications and Strengthening Family Engagement

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF. SEPTEMBER 10, 2021—For decades, districts, schools, and teachers used different tools to communicate with families, making it confusing and difficult for parents and guardians to keep up. In 2011, parent and computer engineer Anupama Vaid set out to build a solution to engage every family with school communications—and all in one place. That solution, ParentSquare, now celebrates its 10th anniversary.

Since the company’s founding by Vaid and her husband Sohit Wadhwa a decade ago, ParentSquare has become the premier unified school-home engagement platform for K-12 education. The Santa Barbara-based company now serves almost half of all schools in California and has expanded to 44 states.

“When I was working, I was getting so much information from so many different sources at my child’s school, it was nearly impossible to stay on top of it all. When I transitioned to be a stay-at-home mom and volunteered as a room parent, I realized that being involved with school is like a full-time job, and I experienced a big difference in how connected I felt with our school community,” said Vaid, ParentSquare Co-Founder & President.…Read More

Cleveland Metropolitan School District Deploys the Stay Connected K-12 Solution from Spectrum Enterprise to Enhance the Learning Experience for Students Needing Robust Home Internet

CLEVELAND, Ohio – With many school districts continuing to look for ways to help students who don’t have robust internet service at home maximize their learning potential, Charter Communications, Inc., which operates the Spectrum brand, today announced that Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) is deploying the Spectrum Enterprise Stay Connected K-12 solution as a multi-year solution. More than 5,300 families are anticipated to participate initially.

Stay Connected K-12 provides schools the ability to offer high-speed, cable broadband internet access directly to their students in their own homes so learning and teaching are uninterrupted. Students’ families are not billed for the service.

Stay Connected K-12 combines the robust speeds and rich features of Spectrum Internet with simplified program management and billing for local districts through Spectrum Enterprise. Users can enjoy:…Read More

Extron Now Shipping Enhanced GlobalViewer Campus Communication Suite to Further Unify Communications

Anaheim, California (August 25, 2021) – Extron is pleased to announce the immediate availability of enhanced functionality and powerful new capabilities for GlobalViewer® Campus Communication Suite, which combines bells, public address announcements, intercom, and network monitoring and control of classroom AV into one software package. Users will experience a more intuitive interface with an improved visual icon library, plus a broader range of configured preset buttons to provide quicker access to frequently performed tasks. New District Operations features allow administrators to broadcast live announcements or use new configurable preset buttons to play recorded announcements to any or all campuses within a district. A dedicated lockdown button, plus presets, enable campus staff to play selected content at specified locations for fast targeted messaging. New self-diagnostic capabilities easily resolve configuration issues.

“GlobalViewer Campus Communication Suite unifies all campus audio systems with an enhanced easy-to-use web interface to manage campus bells and announcements, while providing advanced AV asset monitoring and control,” says Anthony Cortes, Director of Sales and Marketing, Education Classroom Systems for Extron. “We’ve listened to user feedback to expand and improve an already comprehensive list of features that make GlobalViewer Campus Communication Suite ideal for any campus and district. PA announcements and bell schedule management are faster and easier than ever before with the updated user interface.”

The GlobalViewer Campus Communication Suite allows administrators to create and manage recurring bell schedules locally or at the district level. For special events, such as rallies or holiday closures, bell schedules can easily be modified or disabled. Using the intuitive graphical user interface of the GlobalViewer web page or an Extron TouchLink Pro touchpanel, office personnel can make live public address announcements or play back pre-recorded messages with a simple push of a button. Zone capability allows the announcements to be routed to all locations on campus, or a specific room. The integrated intercom system supports two-way voice communication over the network and provides flexible setup options that enable users to quickly connect with the office, help desk, or other classrooms. GlobalViewer Campus Communication Suite enhancements are available today for customers in the United States and Canada.…Read More

ParentSquare Partners With Serent Capital for Significant Growth Investment

SANTA BARBARA, CALIF.– AUGUST 03, 2021 — ParentSquare Inc., provider of the
premier unified school-to-home engagement platform for K-12, today announced it has received
a significant investment from Serent Capital, a growth-focused firm that invests in technology
and tech-enabled services companies. The investment will further accelerate ParentSquare’s
growth plans, including introduction of new products and services and expansion into additional
geographic markets.

ParentSquare is the only fully unified product that engages every family with school
communications and communications-based services—all the way from the district office to the
classroom teacher, and all in one place. Schools know who’s not being reached, and have the
reports and tools to improve contactability and communications equity while maintaining privacy
and security. Before ParentSquare, families and school staff had to navigate multiple platforms
and apps in order to communicate within their school and district, whether it was for district
announcements, attendance, forms, surveys, sign-ups or daily classroom communications.

ParentSquare is currently used by millions of parents, students and staff across thousands of
schools and districts in 44 states. Its namesake product has been honored in several awards
competitions, including as a finalist in the 2021 Software and Information Industry CODiE
Awards, and as winner of the 2020 SIIA CODiE Award for “Best Collaborative Community
Solution for Educators.”…Read More

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