Your Guide to

Improved Communication & Academic Success

The Importance of Regular Communication

Making sure school communications work for your community is about ensuring that every student has what they need to graduate and enter into the world a productive, healthy, informed citizen.

Communication between the school and families is crucial. The more adults hear from their child’s teacher and principal, the more they are informed and engaged, and the more families and caregivers feel involved in school life, the more they trust the adults in the building. And that’s the key. This is equally important for students from immigrant families as those students whose families attended the same school a generation back. 

In other words, fostering communication with the student’s family is an essential element of success. 

Setting the Stage for Communications

On a micro-level, school communications are about conveying information. But on a macro-level, they’re about building strong relationships between families, caregivers, school leaders, and teachers—creating a culture of transparency
and support. 

Research shows that consistent family communication leads to:

• Higher attendance rates
• Higher academic achievement
• Improved behavioral outcomes & social/emotional functioning
• Higher graduation rate & increased college attendance

There’s a single simple but powerful reason behind all this improvement.

According to The Journal of School Psychology, “parents & educators consider communication the number one factor to increase trust.”

The more the adults hear from their child’s teacher and principal, the more they feel “in the know” about what’s happening with their child at school.

The more adults at home trust the adults at school, the more support the child has at home. This is equally important for students from immigrant families as students whose families attended the same school a
generation back. 

It’s clear that communication is key to a child’s learning and development. 

Here are 3 important ways you can set the stage for trustworthy communication.

Create Meaningful Engagement

Encourage Family Involvement
Build trust and dialogue with families via centralized, consistent updates about school events, volunteering opportunities, etc. Don’t let too much time pass without informing them of what’s happening at school.

Create a Dialogue with Families
Establish two-way communication that allows staff, admins, and families to keep an open line of dialogue when needed.

Keep Families Informed with Relevant Information

Reach Every Family

Bridge Communication Gaps
Use tools that can translate documents accurately and efficiently, so everyone receives information in their preferred language.

Make it Easy for Families to Participate
Not every family communicates the same, so diversify communication through different channels: letters, email, text messages, phone calls, etc. 

The Most Successful School Communications:

Enable educators to text from a private number, video chat, share engaging weekly updates, and easily keep a log of all communication.

Empower educators with data analytics to make evidence-based decisions that help to achieve their overall instructional goals while supporting the growth of individual students.

SchoolStatus provides all
this and more for your administration.

All-in-One Communications Hub
Instead of having several apps and tools for family communication, you can streamline your messages and digital forms, choose how they are sent (including Smore newsletters, email, text, etc.) and in what language, and automate distribution—all in one place.

Simple to Use Solution
Skip the complicated setup. Our solutions are easy to use, have a seamless onboarding process, and cut down on tedious administrative work.

On-Demand Student Data
Whether you’re looking up a student’s history or want to have a holistic view of district-wide attendance trends, you can quickly see patterns and gain actionable insights.

Who is Most Impacted by Chronic Absenteeism?

According to Attendance Works, Children living in poverty are almost 3x more likely to be chronically absent. Students from communities of color, as well as those with disabilities, are also disproportionately affected.

A great many of these excused absences are tied to health problems persisting in historically disadvantaged communities, like asthma, diabetes, and dental and mental health issues. Additional barriers include the lack of a nearby school bus route, safe or reliable transportation to school, and food insecurity. 

Students who are most at-risk, who most need to be at school, are the ones most often absent from it. And we might not even notice.

Empowering Families Through Communication

6 Steps Administrators Can Take to Reduce Absenteeism

1. Implement a district-level Superintendent’s initiative to reduce absenteeism, including sending periodic, translated letters home to encourage attendance and explain the importance of being at school.

2. Share a weekly digital, translated building-level Principal Update to Families that clearly communicates procedures & policies. Include a weekly “fun feature” that folks look forward to. Post across multiple platforms.

3. Share weekly, digital, translated classroom/homeroom updates that build a communication bridge from home to school. Include schedule information, lunch menu, upcoming assignments, upcoming events, shout-outs for good attendance, and contact information for teachers and school counselors. Post across multiple platforms.

4. Every week, check the analytics from the above weekly updates. See who is engaging and who isn’t, and measure this against attendance data.

5. Each week, work with educators and counselors to reach out individually to families of students showing a pattern of absenteeism, ideally in their preferred language, to reinforce the importance of their student’s participation in school.

6. Where possible, swap out paper-based forms, which can serve as barriers to attendance, with digital forms.

School Communications & Improved Student Performance 

Parents and caregivers are far better able to support their child’s education when they have readily available access to information about what their child is learning, class expectations, assignments, and due dates, and what support systems exist at school if their child is struggling. 

Most educators believe they’re already communicating this information home, and, on a certain level, they are. But not all families’ needs are the same. Student performance is dependent on families being able to access and understand information sent from schools. Translated texts, emails, calls, and letters become necessary to keep everyone informed and engaged in their student’s education. 

School Communications and Improved Family Engagement

An educator’s ultimate goal is to meet students where they are and help them succeed. Investing in a comprehensive digital communications plan bridges gaps and establishes a connection with a student and their family.

Educators need to evolve as the population does.

By 2025, 1 in every 4 US K-12 public school students will speak a different language at home. 

Multilingual families and caregivers have different barriers to engagement since they may not be versed in English. Building trust means having accessible class materials and conversations with them in their preferred language. 

And then there are the challenges that come with being an immigrant family:

• Struggling with the social and cultural mores
• Struggling with the language
• Being unfamiliar with the ins and outs of the US public school system

A one-size-fits-all approach to school-home communication will not work for what is soon to be 25% of the school-age population.

At-Risk Families are Increasing in Numbers

Children living in poverty have the highest absenteeism and dropout rates. Arguably, engaging this group of families and caregivers is our most important task, and that means removing every barrier we possibly can, including language and social barriers. Keeping an open line of communication with families and building trust from the beginning is critical.

6 Ways to Improve Family Engagement

1. Before students return to school after summer break, introduce families to the counselors, the building, the classroom, and the principal with a translated digital newsletter welcoming
students back.

2. Share a translated digital “Meet the Teacher” newsletter and include photos of the classroom, contact details, and bulleted information about procedures at the beginning of the year.

3. Reach the families that are hardest to engage by mailing out communications in their home language.

4. Look for alternative ways to hold family conferences for those whose transportation, employment, or childcare situation doesn’t allow them to attend in person.

5. Encourage family and caregiver engagement by adding digital surveys to weekly updates.

6. Families aren’t opening the digital updates? Resend the next day with a clearer, and more urgent, subject line: “What you need to know for your 4th grader this week” will get more opens than “4th grade news.”

How Administrators Can Help Teachers Succeed

Data-driven communication is as integral to success as data-driven instruction.

When school districts/buildings invest in robust communications tools, leadership has a 360-degree view of communications across their entire community: how educators are communicating with families, how leaders are communicating with educators, and how educators are supporting students and communicating home. Aligning professional learning with district priorities such as student attendance, student achievement, and stronger home-school engagement is far easier when there’s data to support the goals.

From district/building leadership to instructional coaches to educators, using data to guide your professional development plan can give you insights that will lead
to success.

Two immediate steps you should take to align school communication goals with educators’ professional development:

• At the building leader level, share a weekly update that sets the tone, models communications, and shares resources for educator growth and development.
• Build family communication goals into the district evaluation process and instructional coaching program.

Sample Communications Plan for Schools & Districts

SchoolStatus supports administrators, educators, and families by optimizing school communications. This is a sample school communications plan based on successful programs we’ve worked on with our partners.

Key Takeaways 

Effective communication is the cornerstone of a flourishing educational ecosystem, fostering trust and encouraging academic success. Building relationships between school and home doesn’t mean communicating more, it means reaching families at the most impactful times, with information specific to their child, on the platform and in the language they prefer.

When you create a plan for your district, ask yourself:

• Have you considered the needs of all families in your district when developing your communications plan?
• Who might be left out of your current schedule, communications methods, or translations?
• Are you including proactive and positive attendance-related messages for students and families?
• What are some opportunities to model successful communication practices with teachers and staff?

About SchoolStatus: Helping You Communicate Effectively

It takes a lot to keep families informed, but we’ve seen time and again that investing in communications results in better academic outcomes.

SchoolStatus Connect is a school communications and family engagement platform created to help you build stronger relationships with families. Our centralized communications hub makes it easy to see messages, outreach history, and student data in one place. You can send auto-translated text messages, emails, and mass notifications, and make phone calls without giving out your personal number.

SchoolStatus solutions reduce the burden on teachers and staff by automating workflows and centralizing student and district information. Book a personalized demo to learn how we can help decrease absenteeism and improve school-home communication in your district.