In August 2023, I opened our Pre-K through 4th grade school in Charlotte, North Carolina, to alleviate overcrowding at several East Charlotte campuses. As the founding principal, I knew that fostering trust and engagement with families was as essential as hiring great teachers or setting academic goals, writes Megan Cahill-Clark, principal at Grove Park Elementary in Charlotte, N.C., in an eSchool News essay. The essay has been edited for length and clarity.
When you open the doors to a brand-new school, you’re not just filling classrooms, you’re building a community from the ground up.
Many of our students were transitioning from nearby schools, and their families were navigating uncertainty and change. My top priority was to create a strong home-school connection from the very beginning–one rooted in transparency, inclusivity, and consistent communication, where every parent feels like a valued partner in our new school’s success. Since then, we’ve added 5th grade and continue to grow our enrollment as we shape the identity of our school community.
Here are the steps we took to ensure a smooth adoption process:
1) Get everyone on board from the start. We used comprehensive outreach with families through flyers, posters, and dedicated communication at open-house events. Our teachers were easily rostered–a process simplified by a seamless integration with our student information system–and received necessary training on the new technology platform.
2) Introduce the new technology as a “familiar tool.” We framed our ParentSquare tool as a “closed social media network” for school-home communication. Our staff emphasized that if users could communicate socially online, they could also easily use the platform for school-related interactions.
3) Promote automatic translation. With a student population that’s about 50 percent Hispanic and with roughly 22 different languages represented across the board, our new platform’s automatic translation capabilities (which currently span more than 190 languages) vastly reduced the amount of time and number of headaches involved with creating and sharing newsletters and other materials with parents.
4) Streamline tasks and reduce waste. I encourage staff to create their newsletters in the communications platform versus reverting to PDFs, paper, or other formats for information-sharing. That way, the platform can manage the automatic translation and promote effective engagement with families. This is about making sure that all parents have access to the same information regardless of their native language.
5) Centralize proof of delivery. The communication delivery statistics are used by staff to confirm message receipt–a crucial feature when parents claim they didn’t receive information. The platform shows when a message was received, providing clear confirmation that traditional paper handouts can’t match. Having one place where all those communications can be sent, seen, and delivered is extremely helpful.
6) Manage events and boost engagement. We especially like the calendar and post functions (and use both a lot). Being able to sort specific groups is great. We use that feature to plan events like staggered kindergarten entry and separate open houses; it helps us target communications precisely.
Parents appreciate receiving notifications via email, app, voice, or text–a method we use a lot for sending out reminders. We always want to make it easy for families to receive, consume, and respond to our messages, and our new communications platform helps us achieve that goal.
This direct communication is particularly impactful given our diverse student population, with families speaking many different languages. With automatic translation, teachers no longer need third-party translation sites or manual cut-and-paste methods. It’s helped us foster deeper family engagement and bridge communication gaps we otherwise couldn’t.
eSchool News
