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Communications outlines ParentSquare rollout, website hubs, accessibility planning and new 'Taste of 220' food truck
Summary
Barrington CUSD 220’s communications office summarized a year of changes — expanding ParentSquare district-wide, building centralized web 'hub' pages, launching a food truck and starting a web-accessibility remediation plan ahead of new federal guidance — and reported metrics from parent surveys and platform usage.
Director of Communications Eric Stackling and his team presented a year‑end communications update to the Barrington CUSD 220 Board, reviewing tools, metrics and planned next steps for digital access and community outreach.
Key takeaways: the district implemented ParentSquare broadly (including extracurriculars at the high school) and reported high usage numbers for the high school site — more than 2,000 posts and roughly 21,000 messages — while the website team logged about 230 update requests through a new intake form to better track workload. The district's AI chatbot ('Bolt') answered more than 10,900 questions during the 2025–26 school year, the presentation said.
Communications described several user-experience changes: centralized 'hub' pages for common needs (online registration, Ready‑Set‑Kindergarten), upcoming middle‑ and high‑school transition hubs, and expansion of principal-level ParentSquare usage next year to reduce message fragmentation. The team also highlighted video storytelling efforts (the 'Authentically 220' series) and a monthly recap video that the district will distribute.
Accessibility and compliance: the communications team said new federal guidance on web accessibility is expected within two years and described an inventory approach to determine which active pages and documents must be remediated for screen readers (alt text for images, accessible PDFs, captions for video). The team asked for time to evaluate vendors and tools and to prioritize pages that are actively used by families.
Community engagement: the office unveiled the 'Taste of 220' food truck wrap (designed to represent all schools) and described ongoing coordination with neighboring public entities (village, library, park district) to avoid overlapping major communications.
Survey feedback: a spring survey of 559 respondents showed 93% favorable for urgent/time‑sensitive messaging via ParentSquare, 79% favorable for the monthly '220 Connection' newsletter and 79% saying the volume of district communications is 'about right.' Communications said it will adjust timing and principal‑level messaging in response to the results.
What’s next: the communications team plans a summer community mailer, transition hubs for the 2026–27 school year, another ParentSquare emergency test in August and continued work on accessibility remediation.
