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West Valley moves from Remind to ParentSquare, will migrate website and expand community cafes
Summary
District staff told the board the district is replacing Remind with ParentSquare for consolidated family communications, will migrate the website to ParentSquare 'Sites' next fall, and plans to expand community cafes to reach targeted groups including migrant, Native American and multilingual families.
District communications staff described a multi-part plan to improve two-way family communication: move from Remind to ParentSquare, integrate ParentSquare with the district website using ParentSquare Sites, continue a monthly electronic newsletter and bi-monthly mailed flyers, and expand “community cafes” targeted to specific family groups.
Minerva Pardo (communications staff) said ParentSquare creates a single daily digest per family, supports automatic posting to social media and provides tools such as polls and translated messages. She said ParentSquare also allows posting events that will automatically appear on the website calendar once the district moves the website to the ParentSquare Sites platform.
District staff said the district will continue contracting with Field Group for design work (monthly e-newsletter and bi-monthly mailers) and that ParentSquare will reduce the number of separate messages families receive. The district plans a website relaunch next fall; Tyler Vesh from IT led a cross-functional team to evaluate options and recommended integration with ParentSquare for a single platform and easier calendar and event management.
Communications staff said they intend to expand “community cafes” — small, topic-focused listening sessions — and run targeted cafes for migrant families, Native American families, multilingual families, highly capable program parents and newer Spanish-speaking parents. The district intends to use ParentSquare for scheduling family conferences and for targeted route notifications (e.g., elementary or secondary bus routes). Staff said translation and automatic posting to social media are among the features that influenced the platform selection.
Board members and staff said they would phase the change in with training and “baby steps” to avoid overloading families. Staff emphasized that the change is intended to be integrated—messages posted to ParentSquare will also appear on the new website, and ParentSquare can post automatically to district social accounts.
