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District rolls out Bright Arrow communications and chat tool to limit personal texting with students
Summary
Superintendent Dr. Fritz and staff described a transition from SchoolMessenger to Bright Arrow and BrightChat for district‑sanctioned communications to families, students and staff; the board discussed onboarding and potential future requirements for coaches and staff.
Superintendent Dr. Fritz and IT staff told the board Aug. 20 that the district has begun replacing SchoolMessenger with a new platform, Bright Arrow, and will use BrightChat to centralize staff‑to‑student communications.
Dr. Fritz said the system will let principals and teachers send messages from a district‑sanctioned app rather than personal texting apps. “One of the things that has, changed for us is we brought in a new program, which we've talked about a little bit here, called Bright Arrow. This is a new system that we are using as a district to communicate out to the community, to our families, from our principals to our families,” he said.
Wes, the IT staff member who spoke, described features for staff: the tool can push messages to preselected groups (for example a class roster) from within staff tools such as gradebook, and it supports both group and individual conversations while maintaining district oversight. He said the district had collected many student cell phone numbers during re‑registration and that roughly 1,000 student numbers had been provided so far for group messaging.
Board members asked about a timeline for requiring staff to use the platform for coach‑to‑player communications and were told the rollout would begin this fall and administrative guidance would be an agenda item at an upcoming administrative meeting. “We're rolling it out this fall and trying to get everybody on in there and onboarded and all of that,” the superintendent said.
Why it matters: the district framed BrightChat as a tool to protect staff and students by creating a district‑managed record of communications and to make outreach easier for coaches, teachers and building leaders. The rollout is underway; the board discussed how strictly to require its exclusive use for coach‑to‑player messaging.
