How to Increase Parent Engagement

Parent Engagement

Parent engagement is vital to any initiative driven by Schools or Districts for the Safety of students. Parents are busy working to secure the future of their children. There are chances to miss out on some communication so multiple channels of communication is important to achieve our goal. Once they understand the importance of the program, they are the most committed party in ensuring the safety. Schools should help parents with the 2 critical questions:

What is the vision of the program:

Schools should share their vision for the program with PTA and the entire parent community.

• Schools ability to manage the secured delegation via parent app enhances the safety of students.
• Enhancing carline and classroom dismissal using the Digital App reduces the end of day dismissal chaos and helps teacher dedicate more time on classroom activities.
• Strengthening communication between teachers and parents.

What is in it for the Parents:

Schools/Staff should re-emphasize the benefits a couple of times through various channels to ensure it reaches all parents.

• Parents manage the pickup changes and delegation from their phones rather than relying on notes in their child’s backpack or making last minute calls to the front desk at schools.
• Plan the holiday better by reporting plans of absence easily through their phones.
• Receiving real time alerts to their smartphones with Bus delays, cancelled After School programs, or on their students waiting at the Nurse’s office, as messages for when they are busy in meetings and cannot be distracted by phone calls.

We at Pikmykid work very closely with schools in providing all tools required to enable this change. We continuously improve the rollout process with inputs from the change leaders at schools.

Simple tips for Teachers to send the information to parents

• PMK provides each school with our Core-10 mail template for continuous communication during initial days of program registration. These mailers are an effective way to send out email blast to parents with information about the new program with a registration deadline.
• Parent App registration help guide PDFs (English and Spanish) are available in the document section under “Training Materials” in the school portal that can be sent home as a flyer in each child’s homework folder/communication packet and through email.

Teachers can also send out the information as paper stapled to the loop of each child’s backpack, emails, flyers, PTA facebook updates, Tweets and even a treasure box goodies for the registered students. This could encourage the other parents to register with the program.