Hello Family,

I wanted to thank everyone for all the kind words in the midst of a difficult circumstance. In my conversations with many of you, there were some common questions that I thought I would share.

1. Why did we decide to discontinue the product?

Two years ago we changed how we sent messages. We went from a school-centric approach to a family-centric approach. We essentially decided to let parents choose how they wanted to communicate instead of letting schools choose how messages were sent. We still believe that this was the right choice to make for families, however, when we made that decision our costs increased dramatically. In addition to that, when the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic broke out, despite the fact that our operating costs continued to increase, we made a conscious decision to not increase our pricing as we knew how important our service was during such a critical time when schools were forced to close down and everyone was forced to learn and communicate online.

Our management team has worked hard to look for a sustainable solution that made economic sense but we ultimately came to the hard decision to discontinue the product and focus our efforts on another product that could provide substantial value in the family engagement space, which is Livingtree PD.

We will continue to support the Engage product until the end of September 2022.

2. Do we have any recommendations for similar communications platforms? 

There is no shortage of communications platforms for K-12. Most of them are more expensive than what you are currently paying with Livingtree. We do have a partner company (Edlio) that has a similar product and similar pricing. If you are interested please reach out to carmell@edlio.com.

3. Can we archive our instance of Livingtree Engage?

Yes, we can archive the data, but with limited content. We can help you archive post content shared within schools. Please note that only the post text will be available and will be provided in .CSV format.  The system also supports downloading of all photos shared via posts within the school. This can be done by administrators in the school themselves. For information on how to do this, please check this page. If you have any additional questions, please contact our support team at support@livingtree.com.

4. Will you continue with the Livingtree Professional Development product?

Yes! We have learned a lot over the years about what works and what does not when it comes to family engagement.  We are uniquely positioned to add value to our partner districts. Livingtree Professional Development is technology agnostic. It was designed to help teachers and family engagement liaisons write high efficacy communications with families. For more information please click here.

Thank you again for all that you do on behalf of families.

Sincerely,
Gary Hensley.