Honestly as a technically challenged parent this app scared me. After exploring the easy to use app, and using the readily useful communication tools my comfort level eased quite a bit. The videos seemed slow and do get stuck making viewing a lesson difficult, but none the less I’m still impressed. Actually I was struggling a bit with my son on the subject of learning in school. Despite the COVID-19 crisis I feel like I’m developing a much closer relationship with my son as far as discussing what he’s actually learned and where he needs help. I also feel much closer to his teacher giving me the satisfaction of actively being apart of the education being presented to my child. This has been a very positive experience for not just my son, but the entire family! My two year old can now participate in educational activities with his brother instead of racing out to the curb every morning to wait for the big yellow Twinkie that he doesn’t get to ride.
Update Oct 2024 still ridiculously difficult to get rid of app alert notifications. The weekly aeries emails take multiple viewings to get the badge to go away. Come on. Update: no change. Still ridiculously difficult to get rid of alert notifications in app. How many times do I have to view an email? Using this because I have to with our school district now. I was happier just getting emails from the district because I could just set up rules to auto junk the stuff I don’t care about. The navigation is awful. Left navigation, View by school, view by student, view by alerts. Drop down navigation, switch between all of them. It needs a rethink because it tends to be very hard to find what I’m looking for. Notifications are very difficult to clear, usually involves going to the alert, scrolling to the bottom, refreshing the view, then going to another screen and hoping the alert count goes down. I’d really like a way to not be notified about everything. Some granularity would be nice. Like I don’t need it for the weekly progress reports from aeries, but I would want it on a direct communication from the teacher. Overall it does what it needs to but that’s about the best I can say. I dread seeing an alert badge because I’m going to spend the next five minutes getting logged in because it somehow lost my session, and then trying to clear the notifs.
If I was in 1 building and not a parent and a teacher I might like it. However. I work in 4 buildings and cannot combine my groups so I must send messages to students in each of my 3 elementary buildings separately . The posts come separately from each building and you must log into that building in order to see the messages and posts. There is no central location. I have a daughter in the 4th building I work in. So I get the posts -too many- from her building admin, teachers, and my students and parents. My other daughter attends the 5th building in our district. So your see there is a Constant stream of texts coming to parent square. I receive emails telling me I have a parent square and texts telling me to check parent square. Too much to keep track of. I have asked my students’Parents about it. Their students have been reminded but still miss remote classes so I asked. The parents of children in separate buildings tell me they don’t pay attention to it. They get too many texts and cannot access them easily. So, I give it a 3 because it is useful, but not very friendly for teachers in multiple buildings or for parents with more than 1 or 2 children
Last year my daughter was introduced to Seesaw as a kindergarten and the app was unstable/interactive but confusing to navigate as a parent; which was concerning, not to say that she didn’t learn how to use the tools included like a reading app full of virtual books. ParentSquare is nice because it seems to be set up for parents and users to get the most updated information to respond accordingly. ie something that the parents can “ play “ around with without the distraction of children styled apps. There looks like a feature to possibly interact with your child but the issues I run into are that the PS doesn’t load. I hope these can be easily debugged as relaying on email alone or visiting other platforms like Facebook to stay current with the school via pta meetings or listening in on school board meetings is important to me as a mother of a child enrolled and another on the way.
I’m generally happy with the app, just a couple annoyances: 1) Notifications. My high schooler is often tardy. When he is, I get an alert. I appreciate that part! But after I see the alert, it stays marked with a red unread-style dot, both within the app and on my phone app icon. It will stay that way for an undetermined amount of time, sometimes only a day or two, sometimes up to a week. No matter how many times I click in and out, swipe to refresh, etc, it stays. That means that I get used to seeing the red alert and don’t notice when something important happens. Very aggravating! 2) Appreciating posts. You can’t do it from the Home feed, it has to go into the specific message. When you are there, you can’t click the heart, that’s not activated, you have to click the word “Appreciate” on the other side of the screen. Not at all intuitive and requires multiple unneeded steps. 3) Group Messages. I often want to loop two teachers into the same conversation, but it doesn’t allow for group messages. For example, at our elementary the students each have two teachers. I have to copy and paste the same message to both, and they don’t see each other’s responses, so work is often duplicated unnecessarily. In the middle school my son has a 504, but I can’t communicate one message to all the teachers at once. I gave up on ParentSquare and use email.
I use this as a teacher. Prior to switching over to PS I have used Remind and Class Dojo. I liked both applications for what each brought to the table. Although I did favor Remind a bit more for its usability. At one point my district tried to get us to use Sangha and I refused. It was a terrible and unfriendly program. This year they introduced PS and I have officially closed my Remind account and moved over to PS. Whether I’m using the app or on my laptop it has the best of all messaging apps. My word count is larger, I can post videos, pictures, links, etc. I can schedule messages. Sending private group messages are much easier than on Remind. I like the “forms/permission” option. My parents said it was super easy to sign a permission slip. And best of all? I don’t have to hope that all my parents will join the app. It’s connected to our student rosters so I know that almost every parent will receive my messages.
I have tried several parent/teacher communication tools in my elementary and ParentSquare is by far the best. Having one common place for parents to receive notifications, reminders and the happenings of their child’s classroom has been priceless. It is a tremendous help for parents to see what things are happening in their child’s class and it creates a climate of transparency and trust for my entire school. My entire school is signed up and every teacher uses it several times a week. I also love how it integrates and syncs with my SIS / PowerSchool. It makes getting started and signing up parents very easy. I’ve also been trying out the forms and permission form for things like field trip permission and we love it. Probably the best part of being with ParentSquare so far has been the amazing customer service. Everyone has been so nice and helpful.
Was fantastic, but suddenly stopped getting notifications and previous ones were deleted
I love(d) ParentSquare, and I rely heavily on it for school news and events, emergency notifications, district news, PTO communications, etc. Last week, I suddenly stopped getting notifications, all my past notifications are gone, and the last post I can see is from 8 months ago. The messages appear unaffected. I have all of the notification settings set to “instant” online and on the mobile app. When I run the notification diagnostics for the mobile app, all systems are green, and I get a little pop-up that says this is a test notification. But, when I go to notifications or texts, the test notification is not there. I have searched the help topics and cannot find anything to address this. I have deleted and reinstalled the app. I have turned my phone off and on. I have even checked that my son’s school registration is still active. There is no way that I have found to contact anyone for this, and this presents a MAJOR problem, as the school communicates primarily via ParentSquare.
Parent square seems to be a good tool for parents and teacher to communicate, however I still don’t know where or what I am suppose to do to see their report cards. Kids are in 3rd grade and still don’t know what their grades are. Not very user friendly if not familiar with any of the school software programs. Wouldn’t be all that difficult to print an example out on what to do etc. after all handbooks aren’t printed anymore they surely could give examples out during the first meet the teacher or when parents go a school function. The district wants parents to be more involved and they need to be but there should be support for the parents in order to learn what needs done. And back to report cards, this takes away from having something to look back on when one gets older. I still have some of mine. Seems like it means more to have something physical to see verses looking at a screen and think whatever.
I am very pleased with the Parent Square app. The app gives parents and teachers the ability to communicate with each other in the most simple way! Being able to speak with the Teachers directly and know that I will receive and immediate response, has really been very helpful with my Daughters education...Especially on days that I have concerns about my Daughter after dropping her off to school. The app is also the easiest resource to get all important notifications and reminders for parents within the school and/or district wide. The app is easy to navigate and definitely important for parents to have to allow us to be the most involved with our children and their education.
This system, which our school district spent millions purchasing, is so dysfunctional that teachers and students are spending the majority of their time creating work arounds rather than learning substantive subjects. My own parent system has not worked for weeks now and rather than helping me directly or allowing our school district to help directly our school district is having to act as a go between. I tried to find a contact number to call the company directly but none is available (411 couldn’t even find a number). They want me to log on for assistance and I would if I could but logging on is the problem. This is the legal system of record for our county but since the teachers, students and parents are often unable to use it consistently and are resorting to creating work arounds I’m beginning to wonder the legal implications of including graded work in permanent transcripts (a child’s legal permanent record determines things like graduation, employability, college admissions, financial assistance etc). I hope it becomes more reliable and user friendly with time.
Useful for communication and updates, However, staff are unable to troubleshoot, understand and correct. Reached out multiple times to fix issue of log on (separate parents one child). We each have our own log on-as we should have all same access to account and info in regards to our child, school, teacher and education l. However, when one parent logs on it kicks other one off, must reset passcode each time. (So each day a post is made it has to be rest.) We can’t do separate accounts for one child as this would limit each parent’s communication and updates with School/teacher, nor should it be teachers responsibility to post twice. Log on needs to allow each parent their log on to same account with child(ren). Yes, sharing one log on would seem ideal-and offered to the other parent, but so goes our society of co-parenting. We are not the only separated parents or unique circumstances to this. Please fix.
My children are in a school that uses this app. I was not able to create an account using the email I have on file with the school. I sent a message to Parent Square support via their website and received no response. No one at the school has any idea how to solve this issue and no one at the company responds to customer service requests. Without support it cannot be seen as a reliable way of staying in touch with the school. Update, April 2021: more of the same. Still no support, still unable to set up account, and still completely reliant on text messages from other parents to know what the school is sending via parent square. This app provides absolutely no advantage over email. It simply adds yet another layer of confusion. ***update 5/21: my older child is about to finish 5th grade, so that’s seven years of no support from this garbage company. No one at the school will take administrative responsibility. This is nonsense. This app does not provide any benefit whatsoever over email.
Our district moved to ParentSquare from REMIND this year. While the UI is better, I enjoy the calendar integration, and organization is better as it shows like a timeline… I severely miss the ability to start a conversation with a teacher like I had in REMIND. I literally cannot contact anyone unless I email or call the school if they haven’t made a post for me to send a private comment on- which that feature, the private comments- I also appreciate so other parents are just randomly sending me messages. I just wish I could select a staff member and message them. The secretary told me to “select her” and send information about my daughter’s absence and there’s no option for that so I just had to email it in. I never got the absence notice the district coordinator described to respond to with the excuse note either.
Love the app since we can work with teacher communication and school event plus more. Now what needs works: its so easy to add students and school to the app but you all make it hard to remove students once once they are no longer in ones house hold (it be foster home, divorce or ect) and thats when the other person who’s trying to log in get access and then try’s to changea specific students email verification it changes EVERYONES, and then the main person who opens the account no longer has access making it to the point that now I have to call the schools and find a way to fix or find a solution. And there is no way to contact the person who made this app to fix it (no email or phone number). You really have to go threw the schools. PLEASE FIX THIS SMALL FLAW TO WHERE WE CAN ADD AND REMIVE STUDENTS FROM THE APP.
Best App to receive or to communicate with school staff
I honestly like this platform better than whatever system we use before to communicate. It's real-time messaging and you get the alerts in real-time. One particular thing I like the feature that you can message them individually! It's so user-friendly. I love using this than getting an actual email where I'm not able to interact with other parents, give my opinion, appreciate the message or simply get informed of what's going on in the school. I would love to have a feature where parents can post important news that can be reviewed before being posted to the masses. That right there will be fascinating!!!
I appreciate having a platform for school communications in one place. However, it’s hard to find info or to search for posts. If there is a new comment/update to a post there’s no way to know other than searching for the post and to open the comments. It would be helpful if the post went to the top if there was new activity/comments or an indicator for “new comment”. I’d like to be able to tap on a profile to see their info (who their child is, their contact info or posting activity etc). Posting a photo within a comment would be helpful too (now you have to create a whole new post to add a photo). Also, posting a link within a comment doesn’t seem as straightforward either (you have to leave the app for the website). It’s a simple app that could be more useful with a few more functionalities. Please make improvements!
Parent Square has truly been a blessing to me. Since my child has been home schooling it’s been a challenge for her and myself. Moving forward I saw God preparing us for our upgrade in this modern technology. My child learned quickly but for myself I started catching on and with this app I felt I could communicate more socially to other parents about all the different things relating to our children education and the experiences we learned so far that we could encourage one another through us being able to communicate as parents how we can better help our children get through this pandemic as well as build strength to get us through this as well. This is why I wanted to be apart of Parent Square!💙💪🏼🥰
This is an easy to navigate through, so a pleasure to use with the more I navigate through the app the more I find to make finding my child’s schedule and itineraries easier to understand. Only thing better would be a bus tracking app for our child’s bus, so I can find an easier or closer way to have my child picked up and dropped off, but I’m thinking it may take having more children near me for that to ever happen. Just being able to get in touch with our children’s school and see her schedule and staying completely informed is just Awesome, and a tool that no district should be without. Kudos to the developer
I don’t know when our district purchased the ability to utilize ParentSquare, but I will say this. I have utilized it now for over the past four years, first, with my stepdaughter in high school, and now with my youngest in kindergarten. I am able to constantly be in contact with teachers, the notifications, and frequency with which are extremely helpful as is the ability to customize the notifications frequency that I receive on my iPhone. I love the fact that the district or the school each child is in itself is able to put up forms to fill out for parents, polls, and other means of communication which need to be received by the school if not the district in a timely manner. This in conjunction with the SchoolTool platform works exceptionally well.
I think every school should use this. It is so easy to be able to click on the app and pull up who I need to message. And right now for the carona virus we have to submit a form daily to say if our child has symptoms or if they have been around anyone with covid and it’s just so easy to get on this app and submit the form because this app keeps track of it. If I need to contact her teacher I can If I need to contact her counselor I can If I need to contact principal I can If I need to contact anyone from that school I can all by a click through the app I love it and it’s so simple and easy.
Update 13 Sept: The team helped me figure this out. My husband and I have a shared account but are logging in with different emails. We share the same password due to this, so when one reset the password the other one lost access. Updated my review from 1 to 4. Original review: Since the last update (mid August 2024) the app won’t remember my password or accept my Face ID. I’ve reset my password 3 times in the past 2 days to be able to continue to have access to the messages coming from my school district. This app is regularly a great app, not sure why it’s behaving like this for me and my husband. It’s quite annoying to have to deal with.
Imports wrong number from school system and can’t be corrected in app. If you call parent square help ( the number is hard to find, they don’t want you to call ) they insisted the school district had the wrong number, and wouldn’t listen that the school has all my numbers correct and parent square is only adding my work number not my primary number. School IT also couldn’t fix. Just fyi its buggy and won’t work for everyone To the response: i have emphasized the school info is correct and they confirmed that, there is nothing on the schools end that needs to be changed, Parent square is importing my WORK number not my PRIMARY number, this is a parent square bug, not a problem with the schools information and the fact that neither parent square or the school can fix it after numerous calls/emails to both is astonishing.
Bugs, Duplicate notifications, a hindrance to simplicity
The well intentioned developers behind this app have forgotten that most teachers and parents are not savvy users excited to explore their way through a new approach to critical communication. Old methods will still be used to fill in the gaps. That may be gaps in ParentSquare, teacher knowledge or skill, or technical limitations. This means things like Canva, PDF’s, Word DocX, HTML, and links out to other unmanaged content will persist in use. Using unmanaged content systems or external sources erodes what should have been the key benefits of a comprehensive insular system. In concept this should be a great tool for improving the quality of communication between staff and parents. In practice, however, it’s only a new email provider. An expensive, overly complicated email system with all the potential for abuse email and now a false assurance of privacy and security.
I think the concept is a good one however, the system is constantly kicking out parents so they are not receiving any posts from me, (their child’s teacher) but they get emails from the school office. It takes a few times to put them in the system before they even receive an email. Then I have parents contact me who have been in the system and have received all the emails all year long who are getting kicked out and not receiving emails anymore. And it is a bummer that teacher’s can’t just add the parents/students into the system on our own. We have to call the school office and they have to contact PS to add parents/students. It makes the process longer and sometimes we have to ask again and again for a parent to be added because it doesn’t work the first or second time. Plus, as a parent in the district and an educator in the district, I can only see and posts for my classroom student’s. I cannot see anything for my own children who are at different schools in the district. I get the emails for my own children, however, if I click on an attachment or form or picture through the email, it takes me back to my teacher account and I can never see the links for my own children. Super frustrating.
As a teacher who prefers to use my personal Macbook to my school issued windows device, I was estatic at being able to download a ParentSquare App. The functionality is great on my phone for sending out quick messages and posts, but the app has a couple bugs. These include an inability to dismiss a notifications icon from the widget if the message/alert has been view already on a web browser, I must open the app to dismiss the notifications from within. Further, the app does not support some of the same functions that I depend on within the browser version. This includes navigation to groups (extracuriculars) and the like. I hopeful for UI/UX improvements in future updates. :)
PS is a great tool! I’m also on class Dojo and Remind, but PS is my favorite. I receive notifications immediately and new feed pops up first, whether it’s from the teachers and/or administrators or education board, and you don’t have to go back and forth switching between them all. Messages are easy to convey and receive with no glitches—no complaints whatsoever! So happy my daughter’s school switched! Some people have complained that there is info overload, but if you’re a parent of multiple children in different schools with extracurricular activities, many reminders (even if they’re repetitive) are much appreciated!!! Thank you ParentSquare—keep up the great work!!!
Perfect for keeping up with school events and communicating with teachers and staff without having personal information. Only critique would be that there isn’t a way for a parent to message a specific teacher or staff member unless they message the parent first and the parent replies to the message. The staff and teachers I found did not even know this and thought us parents were just not communicating. I wish this would be included in an update soon. Like a listing of staff and teachers to choose from that are linked to your child’s school would make this app perfect.
I am a teacher and Parent Square is a great way to communicate with parents, schedule meetings, and provide resources to parents. I am way more organized thanks to parent square. I love that I can see which parents have read my newsletter, and that I can have parents RSVP to evening meetings and gatherings. I upload photographs of my students work to share with the parents weekly and it helps everyone to stay connected. During distance learning I have used the Resource Hub to provide parents with helpful articles, recordings of me singing and telling stories and I have uploaded important documents that parents need to fill out.
I absolutely love ParentSquare it has been so informative. The teachers and staff are so prompt with helping me with EVERYTHING. I am a single mom of twins. Everyone wants their babies to be at a great school, one that you as a parent feel confident about. I rate Virtus as a 5 star school, I have watched both of my girls become little ladies. They love their teachers and that truly makes my heart happy. Anytime I need to reach out to either of the girls teacher, they are very prompt and make me feel that I know I made the right decision for my family by choosing Virtus. Thank you Virtus for giving me the courage to place my angels in your care everyday. I appreciate everyone of you!!
I have learned to depend on ParentSquare as much as I do on my secretary. Even more I'd say. Every announcement including late class attendance and absentee alerts are always made as they occur. School events, or upcoming tests or classes are always a click away. And even though I might not have time to get that email/text as it comes in, I always get it no matter when I elect to click and read it. These days all parents need PatentSquare! I can't say enough about having access to it. I'll miss not having it when my son graduates in June, and college begins. Good grief...!
I am so impressed by the interactive notifications, either important or just informative pieces of info. My Bruin is a freshman and I can't tell you how many times I've been reminded by this email The Parents Square of things, that my 14 year old hasn't quite gotten the reminder button working in his brain to share with me. I love it!!! I appreciate all the teachers, leaders and really the students that work hard to help other students!! This act of kindness says a lot for the Ponderosa Bruins as a team!!! I'm a Cougar in my heart, class of 75, (yikes), but I truly truly love the Ponderosa Bruins, and am proud to say I'm also a Bruin at heart!!! Great job everyone...
The best part of this app is the ability to see notifications quickly across all my kids schools. I love that they can send files and that I can view them through the app or download them as needed. ***At least, THAT is how it worked all last year. Now I can’t see pdf documents at all as a preview. I have to download them. It’s super annoying. Please fix this issue as I know I am not the only one. *** This app is so much better than a certain app that out school uses for assignments. The communication ease and ability to quickly find announcements makes this a breeze for busy parents.
The glitches are so annoying and make the app inconsistent and sketchy. It does take forever to start-up (in agreement w/ an earlier review), sometimes (often time) I’ll try to load a video or pic and write a message for it, and once I click the upload button it kicks me out of the app, deleting all the thoughtful words I had to go along w/ the post! The app doesn’t archive things well, either. There are items that were posted a while ago, and I just want to search a keyword from it and find it, and I can’t nor do I know where to even begin if I wanted to. I can’t stand this app, it’s partially the reason why I’m transferring my son’s school and I hope his new school doesn’t use it as a platform.
PS is a great communication tool for both parents and educators! This app has been essential during the covid crises and I have utilized the hubs to post resources and lessons, the private messaging to send links for mtgs, as well as the usual posts for weekly parent notes. I also respond to my boys’ teachers trough the app. It is user friendly even for those who are not technologically savvy. PS has really made navigating this challenging time a lot easier. So thrilled that I will have an efficient way to communicate with parents bit virtually and upon our return to in person learning.
ParentSquare has helped me a lot as a student in at Arizona. I have had a difficult time learning from home but my teachers and head of school has done AWESOME keeping me posted on what to do every day or when a student needs help. This app helps so much to me my parents and probably my teachers. This app has everything to keep me posted or when I need help they respond as soon as they can. I am so glad this app exists it helps a lot! Thank you ParentSquare and all my teachers for being awesome and creating this awesome!!! Thank you for reading these 2 paragraphs it was probably hard see you later!!!!
I use this app for both of my daughters’ schools - one in elementary and 1 in jr high. I really like this app. I wished the school district I worked got used it. It is easy to stay in contact with their teachers and school activities. There is a flaw with it though. When I use PS for my daughter in jr. high, everything loads correctly and is updated with the most recent posts. If I switch to my daughter in elementary, I never can see the most recent post until I restart the app on my phone. But I can switch to the jr. high and never have to restart the app. I always see the most recent post. Why is that? I should be able to switch back and forth.
I would this app even less stars if I could. I am a grandmother who is an emergency contact for my 3 grandkids. I live three minutes away from them and help with car pools and other care giving because both parents work and are at times out of town. I am an emergency contact with the schools but if the school uses this app I am not notified. This app DOES NOT ALLOW parents to add other caretakers to it, so when notiications and emails are sent I am not informed. Parents have to forward notifications to me, which is dangerous and really problematic if they are in meetings and cannot focus on their phones. I pray there is not an earthquake or shooting when this app decides I cannot be notified. Who are you to say only parents can be added to your app?
This a great source of information and communication channel between the school and the parents. I can count on ParentSqare to find out about the latest events, notifications and best of all I can count on my son’s teachers to help me or keep me updated on my sons needs, behavior or progress. I can inform them of any situation at home if necessary. I could say not all the teacher return the message, but I am sure they read them at some point. The one that counts will always stay in touch with you. Love my Brentwood NY School ParentSqare App!!!
Super helpful but has way too many hiccups in the process. It will not load messages in a timely manner, while using it will kick you out of the app and some other annoying things. Happens regularly enough for me to count on it to happen. There is a huge need for a reliable app that can efficiently spread news to parents about their kids and their schools and I worry that in case of an emergency this app will completely crash just given it’s performance with routine type stuff. I really hope this is taken as constructive criticism and that can help improve the app because, like I said, there is a huge need for a good, reliable and efficient app.
I like how it lets me know the schedule for the week and other even happening plus you can communicate with the teachers and or staff. Sometimes asking your kids what is the even or they doing this month is like talking to a sleep walker they never know nothing or they don’t remember. This apps is very useful for me and my child. Wish they had this when I when to school. My question is teacher should have a copy of the homework posted in case the children missed-out or forgot their homework. Thx!
I am a parent at a school that just started using ParentSquare this year and I think it’s overall great for centralizing communication and sharing important information with classes or the whole school. I am a volunteer at the my daughter’s school with multiple roles and it’s nice to be able to post in different groups, share files, create forms, ask for materials donations, and direct messaging with other families and the teachers and staff. There are some challenges with the app that I would love to share, but I can’t seem to find where to give feedback.
Great for elementary; not sure why I don’t get half the notifications for high school
I have kids at both elementary and high schools in the same district; communications are timely from the elementary school, but sporadic from the high school. I’ve noticed that the child profiles at these two levels are structured a little differently, and the one for my high schooler is more limited; maybe that’s why? I’m not sure if this is the fault of the district or the app, but it is frustrating and has resulted in multiple missed deadlines with the high school. Our district has only been using Parent Square for a few months now so hopefully this will improve with time.
I love this app I am so much more informed about all of MPUSD. The video messages from the Principal, Teachers, and Staff have been uplifting and amazing. It shows how important our students are to all of MPUSD. I love the transparency on the important decisions set before the board and the State of California. Thank you for all that you do for our students to ensure the best education possible, especially during and because of the Covid-19 Pandemic. You have all been so wonderful through all of this. Thank you again for all you do for our students and our communities. God Bless! Denys Baker
As a teacher I find this to be a really useful tool to use to communicate with parents! It has a lot of features to it that eliminate the need for other sites which is helpful. I love that I can send groups messages to parents or make them individual. However, it far too often doesn’t work. When I open the app it constantly says “No posts” and will not show anything. It also frequently won’t load the messages tab. These render it completely useful for me. I also wish it had a feature to mute messages after a specific time or delay them until morning. I get messages from parents in the middle of the night. Please add a feature to help protect teachers’ mental health and well being.
Not sure if this is an app or individual school thing. But I really wish there was some way to filter notifications. I tried the setting where it combines the notifications together at the end of the day, and ended up missing some really important, time sensitive announcements about my kid’s bus, among other things. But the only other option is to get ALL notifications. And I don’t care about the sports teams or the grade levels that my kid is not currently in. So I just have to deal with getting 10 notifications a day, for mayyybe one or two to actually be relevant? It’s frustrating.
I am so surprised by the positive reviews. My District changed to Parent Square this year and absolutely hate it. I had great parent communication in the past using Class Dojo - easy to use and functional on a variety of devices. Parent Square is so convoluted and does not lend it self to easy use on an iPhone 11 at all. My attempts to reach out to their supposed amazing support team has been a joke. Chat was never available only to find out they had turned off the chat feature. When I emailed with an issue their literal response was that they hadn’t seen that issue before so it wasn’t a priority for them to help me resolve it. I really wish I could wrap my head around how people find Parent Square worthy of these positive reviews...for me it has been nothing but an absolute nightmare.
This program helped us on everything from learning distances. At first we feel bored and a little tires but after awhile, we wrote down date and time for each of our children then we kind of feeling the differences, thanks for teachers times and this great program to help everyone on studying without mess up and lacking of activities. Now as the parents, we are feeling great and very appreciated all the hard work from programmers and teachers plus our children as students are working together, keep up the tremendous work.
As a mom with four kids in four different schools Parent Square has become a life line of sorts for me, so I can keep up with everything going on at my children’s school. (Two of which use parent square) I get real time updates and communication from my children’s schools and the interface is pretty simple especially for someone like me that’s always on the go. I can toggle between the schools and my children’s profiles easily, so the information does not get mixed up per child.
This app is helpful when it works correctly. I have three children in three different schools and unless I have a particular school selected, I won’t get that school’s notifications. If I am on the high school page, I won’t get notifications that my daughter’s elementary teacher posted something. It’s extremely frustrating and I feel like I am constantly dropping the ball when it comes to special days or announcements. The teachers rely heavily on this instead of email or paper notifications (which I can’t fault them for, this seems easy enough), but I swear I miss half of the things that are posted unless I check each school individually.
What is ParentSquare? ------------------------- ParentSquare is a safe and secure platform for all school-to-home communication. The two-way group messaging, private conversations, district-wide alerts and notices, and simple user interface keeps everyone connected, creating a vibrant school community. In today's ed-tech world, schools need a better communication system than relying on hard-to-track emails, lost flyers, missed robocalls, website updates that are never read, or piggybacking on SIS or LMS tools meant for student communication. ParentSquare brings the power of ed-tech revolution to the parents. It reverses the trend for disparate, one-way communication that keeps parents as 'spectators' to their child's education. Understanding the need for a whole-school adoption, we strive to keep an easy to use interface for ParentSquare, much like the social tools you are used to in today's online digital world. ParentSquare caters to every parent, including those who rarely use technology. ParentSquare for iOS ------------------------- With ParentSquare for iOS, parents can easily connect with teachers and staff at their children’s school from their iOS device. The app allows parents to: - View posts, appreciate and comment - Sign up for wish list items, volunteer, and RSVP and view your sign ups - Check dates for upcoming school and class events and add them to your device calendar - Send private messages (with attachments) to staff members (or other ParentSquare users*) in your school - Participate in group conversations - View posted pictures and files - View the directory of your child’s school* - View notices (attendance, cafeteria, library dues) - Respond to absences or tardies* - Purchase for goods and services offered for sale by the school * If allowed by your school's implementation