Collaboration Portals for Parents in K-12 schools

Parent Teacher Organizations or Parent Teacher Associations are an important part of the public school fabric in the United States. They act as a conduit between the parents and the Board of Education in each district as well as the channel of communication between parents and the Principal/Staff running a school.

Research has shown that parent involvement and support for children has been critical to their success. The earlier the parent gets involved in their children’s education and growth, the more significant are the results.  Parent involvement has resulted in higher grades, test scores and graduation rates. In spite of the evidence, lack of parent involvement is a well known and huge problem in public schools. Parents are busy with the day-to-day grind of their lives and take a back seat when it comes to their child’s education.

Easy access to information and ability to talk to other parents in a social setting raises awareness of parents to issues in their schools. This usually prompts them to take a more active role.  Mass Email Newsletter that get lost in the parent’s glut of email is the current mode of communication from schools or PTOs to parents in most districts.  This is not sufficient when it comes to individual attention that parents need – we have found that parent portals dedicated to the communication between PTOs and parents is very useful for dissemination of information.

Group calendaring enables parents to see information pertaining to their children’s classes and club groups only. Discussion portals helps to build a support system for parents to share and benefit from engaging in the class or school dialogue.

Overall, this provides support for parents as well as teachers. Minimal time is spent in administrating the class and more time on actual enrichment. Self-service portals and parent networks a must have for every school in the digitally connected world of today. LocalArq can help your PTO to set up an active living breathing self-service portal like the one shown on http://franklin.localarq.com/ with group collaboration, calendaring and forms.