Managing school notifications and parent communications is a frustrating task for many K-12 families. With so many different school notifications, it doesn’t take much to overload the phone of a busy parent. However, schools and districts must tackle the challenge of reaching every parent in their preferred channel, AND in their preferred language.

Here’s our theory: Parents will always have a better experience if school communication fits their needs. So, school communications should reach families in the way they want to be reached.

That’s why over the last year, Livingtree made significant enhancements to the Livingtree Engage school communication platform’s SMS text messaging so that every message reaches parents based on their preferred channel, whether that be SMS text message, email, or in app.

So if you’ve seen this message in your Livingtree Engage account, that means your messages are being sent and delivered to parents in whatever method they prefer, including SMS text messages.

This major enhancement makes it easy for administrators and educators to create and send school communications. When creating a message to send to parents, you don’t have to select how it will be sent. Instead, the message is automatically delivered in the preferred method of each parent. And like always, the messages are automatically translated into 100+ languages regardless of whether a parent receives it via an SMS text message, email, or in-app.

The best part is that parents can easily set and adjust their preferences for how they’d like to receive messages and notifications. That way, they can choose to receive messages in whatever channel suits them best, and schools don’t have to worry about overwhelming parents with notifications. So the parent who likes to receive messages through every channel, and the parent who wants to receive communications in just one place, can both adjust their settings to meet their needs.

What about parents who don’t want to receive every single message, and would rather just see each day’s communications in one message? Livingtree Engage provides that option as well! In their preferences, parents can select whether they’d like to receive a Daily Summary email of Livingtree activities. This option sends an email to parents at the end of each day with a complete summary of the activities from that day.

In addition to providing parents the ability to control how they receive their school communications, the Livingtree Engage SMS text messaging enhancement makes it so that parents don’t even have to download an app or login to the platform to view and respond to school communications. Families can easily view school communications along with all file and media attachments, respond to school messages, and even view and interact with upcoming events.

This is a big advantage to some school communication apps and school notification systems that only focus on sending SMS text messages. Livingtree Engage incorporates features like a calendar for events, volunteering and sign-ups, and parent polling. It also ensures that parents can receive translated communications and have two-way communication capabilities. And of course, this is all unified within one communication platform so that parents don’t have to juggle other classroom communication apps and methods, especially as they move from teacher to teacher and school to school.

If you are looking to enable parents to receive communication in the way that best suits their needs, or want a better way to communicate with parents, Livingtree is here to help you make it happen!

There are two options to get started with the Livingtree Engage platform. With the free parent-teacher communication option, teachers can communicate with parents without any costs, subscriptions, or ads. There are also school and district communication platform plans to unify parent communication and improve family engagement across all schools and classrooms. Click one of the options below to learn more about enhancing communication in your school community!