Georgetown ISD cites ParentSquare, new website and volunteer push as boosts to community connection

Georgetown ISD officials told the board on Jan. 7 that the district has rolled out a suite of communication and community-engagement changes — including the ParentSquare messaging platform, a new content-management system for district websites and expanded volunteer and mentoring supports — aiming to increase reach and responsiveness to families.

The changes matter because district staff said the tools allow faster, two‑way contact with parents, automatic translation into families’ home languages and improved volunteer matching, all intended to help attendance, family engagement and emergency communications.

Melinda Brazier, a district staff member who presented the update, described three major technology and engagement changes launched in 2024. The district switched its mass communication platform to ParentSquare in August 2024, replaced its Blackboard website system with a new content-management system and expanded its volunteer-management setup through a platform the district calls MVPS, which it operates with a vendor named Relatrix.

Brazier said the ParentSquare rollout provides two‑way texting and translation to parents in the home language recorded in Skyward, the district’s student information system. “We have 100% contactability,” Brazier said, adding that the district’s open rate is about 90 percent since the switch. She said current user preferences show about 96 percent of users opting to receive messages by text, 84 percent by email and roughly 35–36 percent via app notifications. Brazier said the district’s previous system had about a 93 percent contactability rate and a roughly 65 percent open rate.

District staff told trustees that two‑way messaging has already been used for attendance notices, nurse communication about medication needs and teacher messages to whole classes or individual families. Brazier said the platform protects parents’ contact information while allowing replies to come back into the district’s system and that the automatic translation feature has helped staff communicate with non‑English speakers without waiting for manual translation.

The website change, implemented in summer 2024, consolidated about 20 district websites and roughly 10,000 pages, Brazier said, and was intended to reduce outdated content and improve mobile access for families who rely on phones rather than computers.

On volunteers and mentoring, Brazier said the district now has more than 8,000 people registered in its volunteer system; she noted roughly 2,000 of those registrants are district employees. She said more than 500 volunteers were listed as serving one‑on‑one with students (a conservative estimate because some campus-level activity is not captured in the central system), 329 people are registered as reading buddies and 63 high-school volunteers serve as elementary mentors. The district added at least one volunteer coordinator at every campus, and Brazier said about 35 individuals currently serve as volunteer coordinators; those coordinators receive a stipend for the additional work of pairing volunteers with campus needs and training other reception and front-office staff on the system.

Brazier described mentoring as an attendance and engagement tool, saying students are more likely to attend when they have a reliable adult or staff member checking in. She also highlighted philanthropy and community partnerships: staff reported more than $60,000 in in-kind and cash support for families at the holidays through food, clothing and gift-card drives, and volunteers and civic groups stepped in to expand a school-supplies backpack drive to about 1,000 backpacks this year.

Trustees and other board speakers praised the efforts and asked procedural questions about where community groups should be directed to volunteer. Brazier said groups or individuals should contact her office or the campus principal and that volunteer coordinators will generally handle pairing volunteers with campus needs; new program ideas are vetted with principals before being deployed.

District staff said they will continue to refine survey work in spring 2025, expand training for volunteer coordinators and continue using tools such as ParentSquare and the district’s “Let’s Talk” portal to gather feedback. At the end of the presentation the board moved on to a separate agenda topic: legislative priorities for the 2025 session.

Looking ahead, the district described the work as ongoing: staff said they will keep expanding committees and councils that solicit community input and use the communication platforms to try to increase participation and better match community resources to campus needs.