For school administration teams, the month of August is one of the busiest. Staff are returning to the building, new hires are onboarding, and at some point, students will return to classrooms. Amidst the hustle are ongoing budget talks, building maintenance tasks, and often conversations surrounding communication procedures and channels. Let’s identify budget-friendly options and simple strategies, particularly for independent schools, to address these topics.
Make It easy to Connect
If a parent needs to contact the school, that information must be easy to find and easier to access. It may even be worth choosing a specific number for visibility. Schools have a wealth of budget-friendly digital communication tools at their disposal. Don’t leave parents stuck emailing or calling an often-busy office line any more than you would leave your staff sifting through, filtering, forwarding, and returning emails and voicemails. Easy, real-time communication is essential for internal time management.
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- Create dedicated reporting lines for attendance, enrollment, even school tours. Your administration team can then document and schedule this information at their convenience without intermittent daily interruption.
- Use an automated directory to help filter calls and reduce the load on your admin staff. This is especially beneficial in the busy hours of arrival and dismissal.
- Let features like Follow Me Calling leave you free to walk the halls and check on classrooms without fear of missing a call.
- Ensure you’re calling from a single phone number, regardless of the device used so that parents know to pick up. Staff members can even use an app on their mobile phone or desktop computer to display the school number and protect their private contact information.
- Schedule Do Not Disturb during class time to direct callers to a voicemail and then transfer that voicemail to an email or SMS message, keeping communication flowing without interrupting class time.
- Create and change the automated school greeting in minutes to reflect closures, teacher work days, or even include quick reminders of upcoming events.
- All of this can be done very quickly and easily with auto provisioning and without taking your precious administration team time and resources.
Business Messaging Service
- Segment your contact list to send bulk communication variations to staff and parents separately.
- Set reminders to auto send for anything from events to individual vaccination reminders.
- Keep safety simple and effective. Use QR codes to initiate a text conversation. Have a parent scan a QR code upon arrival to initiate identity verification and let staff know they are there to pick up their child.
- Use messaging to collect image information, from identity verification to permission slips to doctors notes.
- Weather delays become easy to navigate with text blasts—even share an image of the adjusted schedule or direct recipients to a website link.
Start with your Staff
When thinking of communication strategy, begin with your staff and work outward. This single strategy will improve the consistency and accuracy of the information floating around your school. Your staff should get information first rather than hearing information at the same time as students and parents. This ensures there is time for them to ask clarifying questions and express concerns well before you share with your parent and student community.
Use Channels that work
One of the biggest struggles in school communication can be finding the channels that work. You cannot expect to be present in all of them, so determining top channels and committing to consistency in those channels is key. If you’re unsure, send out a simple Google Form or other simple survey to collect responses from your parent community and your staff. You will likely find that your staff have slightly different preferences and you can adjust based on that information to be sure the information is in their hands at the right time.
Popular, free underutilized channels:
Google Calendars
Google calendars are a mainstream calendar system that integrates with Android and Apple platforms. Schools can create Google calendars to share with the school body and make real-time updates. Don’t forget to make use of every field, from the location to the time to a description of the event and web address if applicable.
Social Media Groups
Consider private or secret parent groups or public alumni or supporter groups to rally your greater community. Social media can be an excellent tool to create your online community while giving the school administrative control in the background. Create events, coordinate social gatherings, and connect your school community members.
Private Social Media Profiles
Classrooms may keep a private Instagram page to capture pictures easily viewed by parents. Best practice is still not to include name or location information of your students.
Keep a predictable Schedule and Rhythm
Once you’ve determined your channels and the content those channels will hold, set a schedule for each where appropriate. For example, if a newsletter is your channel for all-inclusive communication, send that out weekly at approximately the same time. Let your community know when to expect communication. Staying predictable ensures your information is easily found and allows priority/important non-routine information to stand out.
Time of Day
Learn the best times of day for the most captive audience and schedule your messages to arrive consistently during these times. Again, this may be different for parents than it is for your staff, but this can easily be accommodated with scheduled blasts and posts.
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Keep it Simple and Short
Too much, too often is overwhelming and can add confusion. Commit to organization, with 80-90% of your communication scheduled, consistent, and only as frequent as needed. If you send a weekly newsletter, keep all email content to that newsletter. If you send text reminders, make those the highest priority and nothing more. Majority of your content should be short and to the point.
Where and Which Channels will tell the story
Engagement is informative, but it’s also emotional. In some channels you’ll want to include your story. This is compelling content that appeals to your reader. (e.g., an interaction with a student, an anicdote from a teacher about a caring parent, even a comment about the positive hum of the student body returning for the school year). This could be a short introduction included in every newsletter or a pullout story in every weekly email. You can also include short engagement pieces in your social media, like Facebook and/or Instagram.
Evermore, schools are required to stretch budgets further all while often being asked to increase services, support, and communication. At VirtualPBX our primary objective is to provide enterprise level services to small and medium sizes businesses and organizations. As a US-based, privately owned business, we are the user-focused virtual idea leader, driving connections and helping businesses scale and flex through communication technology. VirtualPBX also backs every product with 24/7 human support. We are here to help your business communicate better.
