SDPC Gives Parents, Guardians New Communication Options

Pickens County Schools have implemented the ParentLink 9 suite of mobile apps and communication services as part of broad parent and community outreach program.

The School District of Pickens County is partnering with ParentLink® to provide its schools with the innovative ParentLink 9 communication platform. This system will allow parents and guardians to check their students’ grades, assignments and attendance information easily online. It also allows schools to contact parents, guardians and staff members instantly about announcements or emergencies.

“We are extremely excited to release ParentLink 9,” said Dr. Kelly Pew, SDPC Superintendent. “It’s so important that we can communicate effectively when there is an emergency. It is also important for us to communicate with our parents about the progress of their children in school. It was obvious to our selection team that ParentLink will make it possible for us to reach every segment of our community with the right information in the right way and at the right time. These services will truly help bring our communication into the 21st century.”

ParentLink 9 provides a comprehensive set of integrated communication and leadership tools including ParentLink’s well-known outreach messaging platform. ParentLink 9 includes the following: Mobile App for Parents and Community Members—With this smartphone app, parents, students, and interested community members can have district information at their fingertips. Users will have access to news, calendars, sports, messages, directories, and all of the district’s social media (Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, etc.), accessible anytime, anywhere. Parents can login and have access to all of the important information relating to their child’s education: messages, grades, assignments, attendance and more.

Parents can also set alerts to notify them of grade changes, missed assignments or attendance violations. Parents can also access this information through our web portal.

Mobile App for Administrators—This is the fastest, most convenient way for school 
administrators to create, send and track messages, without the need to be at a computer with Internet access. In a matter of seconds, a message can be created and sent to individuals, groups, classes, schools, or even the entire district.

Administrator Messaging—Administrators can send messages out to parents, students, staff and the community. These messages are especially effective in emergency situations and for increasing event participation.

Administrator Dashboard—With this screen, administrators will be able to see at a glance how well the communication programs are working at the district. The dashboard will aggregate metrics from several areas such as Parent Usage, Community Usage, Teacher Usage and School Usage, and compare those to GPA and attendance data so that administrators will immediately know how the communications are impacting student achievement.

Attendance Management—With ParentLink, administrators will be able to identify, track and communicate with at-risk students and their parents.

The attendance management features will help administrators identify

attendance trends.

Surveys —Administrators can quickly and easily obtain feedback from parents, students, staff, and the community with the built-in survey capability. Answers can be multiple choice, true/false, free-form, and more. 
“Effective communication is essential for student achievement,” said John Graff, President at ParentLink.

“ParentLink 9 allows every person vital to a student’s academic success to have the information they need in order to help their student succeed. We commend Pickens County and Dr. Pew for their vision and their commitment to creating a powerful educational community.” 
About ParentLink® 
ParentLink is the complete communication solution for education, providing the tools to link schools, parents, students, and the community in one common objective—to create educational communities. Exclusively serving the K-12 market for over 20 years, ParentLink provides administrators with a communication platform that will keep parents engaged and students achieving. ParentLink is the central communications hub for all of a district’s various information systems, allowing educators to communicate the right information in

the right way and at the right time. Every week, thousands of schools use ParentLink to securely send millions of messages to students, parents, and the community, in the form of phone calls, emails, SMS text messages, Facebook and Twitter posts, printed letters, and fax messages, or via the web. ParentLink is the all-in one communication solution, helping educators improve parental

outreach efforts and enjoy the benefits of increased student achievement.