2021: Year In Review

Big Rocks

We had an exciting year of growth at ParentSquare, and it’s all thanks to our incredible schools who continue to share their ParentSquare success with other school communities. Here are some of our biggest accomplishments from 2021!

Product enhancements for remote learning scenarios included:

• Grew our leadership team with our Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Marketing Officer, VP of Inside Sales, VP of Customer Success, and Chief Financial Officer.

• Partnered with Serent Capital for a significant growth investment to help us take ParentSquare to new heights.

• Announced as a 2021 SIIA CODiE Award Finalist for “Best Customer Experience in EdTech” for our COVID-19 response.

• Earned iKeepSafe COPPA Safe Harbor, FERPA and California Student Data Privacy Certifications to meet the industry’s highest standards of privacy and security.

• Formed a new partnership with Central Access Corporation to power its SAM Spectra Messaging System and bring ParentSquare to 130 Mississippi school districts.

Product Updates

This year, we delivered some of the biggest and most exciting product updates we’ve ever done and we hope they helped you elevate your school-home communications. Here’s a recap of a few of the things we brought to you throughout the year.

• Community Groups lets community members sign up for email communications on a district or school-branded public webpage for fundraisers, alumni gatherings and more.

• Pure Contact contact verification ensures you have the correct contact information for all parents and guardians, so you can reach every family when you need to most.

• District Direct Messaging lets district administrators and staff send and receive direct messages from a district-level inbox.

• Smart Alert recipient filtering allows users to better target Smart Alerts by creating custom segments when choosing recipients within schools, classes, or groups.

• Design Blocks allows users to create mobile-responsive, custom newsletters by dropping image and text “blocks” into posts and templates.

Fresh Content

Our team created tons of valuable web, visual and blog content—covering all things school-home communications. Here are some of our favorites from the past year. Please feel free to share with your colleagues and other school communities!

• Health Screening Tools: 5 Questions Schools Should Ask

• Best Practice Guide — Effective Family Communications: From Content to Cadence

• Infographic — Effective Family Communications: Does Your Messaging Stack Up?

• School Communications Self-Assessment

• Infographic — K-12 Communications Platforms: What Matters Most?

What’s Coming Nex

2021 was the year of “getting back on track” and we’re proud of all that we accomplished. Our team can’t wait to bring you more exciting things in 2022 such as

• More reports in the dashboard. Look out for messaging activity, and posts and alerts digests to better understand the amount and kind of messages being sent home.

• Secure Documents E-Signatures. Gather signatures on important documents you send home via Secure Documents.

• Partner integrations. We want to make your life easier through technology, and integrating with other software programs is key. Watch out for more integrations in the year ahead.

• ParentSquare API. This year, we’re aiming to provide access to your data in ParentSquare through an API so you can integrate it into your own business processes.

• Enhancements to existing features like Direct Messaging, Forms and Personalized Auto Notices. We are listening to your feedback and will continue improving upon what we’ve built.

It’s been another great year for us here at ParentSquare and we feel blessed, but it wouldn’t be possible without you, our schools, so thank you. Almost everything we’ve developed this year has come out of the creativity of our community—please keep those ideas coming. Here’s to another great year together in 2022!

With gratitude from Santa Barbara, CA
Anu
Founder, ParentSquare