New Bedford schools to adopt ParentSquare districtwide; soft rollout in April, full use by July 1

The New Bedford School Committee heard a public presentation on March 10 about ParentSquare, a communications platform the district plans to adopt to centralize mass notifications, classroom messages and school websites.

Assistant Superintendent Joseph (Dr. Joseph) described the rollout timeline and features. “The ParentSquare platform is gonna be able to allow our schools and educators to text, to email, our families to receive notification,” he said, describing the system’s ability to send voice calls, texts and emails and to integrate with the district’s student information system.

The committee was given a phased timeline: a soft rollout beginning April 7 for communications and classroom features, a family training session scheduled for March 27, and a districtwide implementation target of July 1 with school websites updated afterward. Joseph said schools and staff are being trained through a train‑the‑trainer model and that recorded sessions will be available.

Joseph told the committee the platform supports more than 100 languages for automatic translation of messages and bidirectional translation in direct messages. On security, he said the system will be tied to the district domain and integrated with Aspen (the student information system), reducing ad‑hoc teacher accounts and providing analytics about message delivery.

Committee members asked about how families will be enrolled and about notifications for absences and newsletters. Joseph said enrollment will be pushed out to families; the ParentSquare team and district staff will hold training sessions and provide in‑person help during rollout. He said the district will continue legacy communications during the soft rollout so no family loses contact while adoption progresses.

No formal vote was taken; the presentation proceeded as part of the superintendent’s report and district technology rollout planning.