The Reality in School Parent Engagement – Is Your School Moving Forward or Going Backward?
Small schools are falling behind the times if they continue to ….
- Communicate and engage parents primarily through websites or newsletters.
- Use benevolent parents or friends to design and maintain their website or run their IT infrastructure.
- Send newsletters, with over 2,000 words, that are four to seven pages long, take five hours to create, and are designed to perfection. And most parents tune out after the first page!
- Put their school calendar on a website or a pdf file or on a piece of paper which ends up on a refrigerator door that parents are expected to view every day.
- Keep searching for the next free tool to add to their school communication arsenal… And are delighted with using Google docs to engage the parent. ..And their ideal technology product is always missing that one extra feature that will help their school (btw, that’s called a custom solution and it costs money!)
- Schedule parent teacher conferences that involve parents walking in to sign up on a piece of paper or use email to go back and forth on their schedules, or stretch the limits of their front desk‘s patience!
- Think a majority of parents are excited for the next big auction or school fund raiser. Not true.
Where does your school stand in adapting to the new ways of engaging the parent?