“It is an all-in-one platform for school communication, from the district down through to classrooms,” said Katie Shane, VCSC chief communications officer.
“You are not downloading multiple apps, especially once students get into sports and after-school activities,” she said. “There has been a lot of frustration on the amount of communication tools schools were using.”
It supports instant messaging, enabling real time communication among teachers, administrators and families. It provides timely notification of important events as well as updates in emergencies.
The school board, staff and community have asked for better communication from the district and greater transparency, and the result is the change to ParentSquare, Shane said earlier this year.
For the past few months, training has been provided to VCSC employees, and many have already begun using the software, said Superintendent Chris Himsel in a message posted on the district’s Facebook page.
Among the improvements, ParentSquare enables the district to directly message families of riders on specific buses, such as if a school bus is running late.
Before, parents would receive multiple messages about bus route changes not affecting their children.
“Many of you may have already noticed a significant decrease in the number of communications about bus route changes,” Himsel stated in a communication via the district’s Facebook page.
The new tool also provides schools with options to send communications in different ways depending on the urgency of the message.
It provides parents with the ability to choose the way they prefer receiving messages and the types of messages they receive.
Parents might want all information in real time, or they can select a digest option in which they get one bulk notification at the end of the day, Shane said.
However, if there is a security issue, even if parents select the digest, “any emergency communication over-rides any setting they have and they will receive that message,” Shane said.
ParentSquare also offers multi-language support, which will help create more effective communication for non-English speaking parents.
VCSC parents are being encouraged to download the free ParentSquare app to their phones, and an email was sent out to families on how to access instructions to do so.
“It’s a great app with information all in one centralized location,” Shane said.
Even if parents don’t download the app, they will still receive school communications, but are encouraged to have up-to-date information in Skyward, the VCSC data management system.
The school district has worked with a parent focus/test group who have been able to access ParentSquare and provide feedback.
Ellie Templeton, who has children at Woodrow Wilson Middle School and Lost Creek Elementary, has participated in that test group.
“We have been pleased with ParentSquare so far,” she said. The principal and teachers at both Wilson and Lost Creek have been using the program for a couple of weeks.
Templeton said that her children in elementary school ride the bus, “so we are always looking for updates on delays and changes. With the former (communication) program, we were getting every single message about every single bus at the school. It was frustrating and difficult to weed through the messages to find the information that was specific to my students.”
With the switch to ParentSquare, the messages have decreased significantly and “we’ve receiving timely updates about our bus,” she said.
Templeton said it’s too soon to know exactly everything about ParentSquare, “but it seems the corporation is moving in the right direction.”
The district is also using ParentSquare to update its website so that information is easier to access; that update is still underway and will be completed early in 2025.
The web re-design will be especially helpful for enrollment of new students, including those starting pre-K and kindergarten, Shane said.
“The way it is laid out on the website currently is incredibly confusing,” Shane said.
After winter break, VCSC will use one app, ParentSquare, for communications.
Use of additional apps (Remind, ClassDoJo, GroupMe, etc.) for classroom communication, after school activities or athletics will be discontinued.
The new platform also allows for student-teacher communication through StudentSquare, which will primarily be used in middle and high school. That portion will be launched before the 2025-26 school year.
Parents will also receive the StudentSquare information, Shane said.
The district recognizes that as ParentSquare is rolled out, “We know there will be questions. There will be bumps,” Shane said.
The district, including Shane and Information Technology staff, will work with families to address problems.
“It may be a little bumpy at first, but so far it’s been very positive and our teachers, principals and teacher leaders [who train other school staff] have been wonderful about it,” Shane said.
The district did a lot of research and talked to other school corporations, and ParentSquare was the front-runner, she said previously.
The annual cost is $69,696 per year and the price is guaranteed for the next three years.
©2025 The Tribune-Star (Terre Haute, Ind.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
