Connected on All Levels: Why Snap! Connect is the Solution for Your District

Snap! Connect is a mobile and web-based family engagement app that connects students, guardians, teachers, and school administrators.

It provides an easy way to equitably share news and events, send reminders, participate in two-way messaging, and engage with the community. The app’s two-way messaging can be initiated by any user. It also provides language translation and text-to-speech capabilities to bring equity to the family engagement practices of districts and curated news feeds and alerts to help meet families where they are. The app offers administration-level tools to deliver the data admins need to keep their district connected. This is truly an application that was designed with all the important players in mind. Let’s take a look at how it works at different levels.

Why School Staff Love it

Snap! Connect knows how much teachers and other staff are responsible for, so it is designed to ensure that teachers can log in and focus on what is important – engaging! Snap! Connect regularly imports all roster and guardian data from your district’s Student Information System (SIS). This makes finding and messaging guardians much easier and quicker. In addition, its language translation services and text-to-speech capabilities assure teachers that their messages are accessible to the families with whom they are trying to communicate and that they can read any messages that are sent to them, regardless of the languages in which they are sent.  Says one teacher who uses Snap! Connect in NYC, “Usually in an email it would be really hard for me to communicate with my parents who don’t speak English, so Snap! Connect makes it very simple for these parents and for me.”

It provides classroom teachers with a convenient, streamlined platform that allows them to effectively communicate through one-way posts and two-way messaging in a single application. Staff are able to create their own additional groups that aren’t rostered in the SIS. This allows them to post news to specific groups, whether those are classroom groups, academic groups, extracurricular groups, parent volunteer groups, or others. The app allows teachers to add attachments and images and to share videos as well. The application also provides teachers with the ability to see who has read and liked their posts and messages, taking the guesswork out of engagement. The access to equitable engagement and the proof of its success through data are of great importance to school staff.

Why School Admins Love it

Snap! Connect makes accounts available for every staff member(including nurses, counselors, front office staff, and more), ensuring that no crucial players are excluded from the communication strategy. Administrators also enjoy an increased response rate because the app empowers all staff and guardians to communicate with ease, regardless of language or literacy barriers. “Snap! Connect has increased parent engagement in our school and it’s also increased staff morale,” says one Snap! Connect principal. “Snap! Connect has improved the culture of our school.”

The streamlined communication platform allows admin to post news and announcements to any group. They can communicate with the whole school, a certain grade, a specific class, or special interest groups, like student government. Further, school admins have access to actionable analytics and meaningful metrics that break down how each community member is using the app. The school administration can use this newly acquired data to strategize more efficiently and effectively.

Why Districts Love it

District administrators can use Snap! Connect to post news and events to families and/or staff across the district. They also have the option to target those who fit into specific groups, such as grade levels or feeder patterns. Communities and trust are built when equity becomes a guiding principle in family engagement. The application makes equity an evolving idea rather than a ‘check-box’. Allowing families to select their own language, initiate a conversation, and address communication in a secure space empowers guardians to be active participants in their children’s education while feeling supported and being engaged. “Our partnership with Snap! Connect has been instrumental in helping us move toward our equity goals. As a district we strive to engage each and every student and family member,” says Allyson Vukovich, Director of Community Schools in Des Moines Public Schools. “The support we have received from Snap! Connect has been instrumental in our success.”

District administrators can access actionable analytics for their district and each school that can further provide insight into how the solution is being used, which languages are represented at which schools, and even what times of day staff and families are most active. Schools and districts finally have a solution and the metrics to monitor it and prove success.

Finally, implementing this effective communication app is easy! The Snap! Connect team provides training and tech support to all levels of administration and staff. They also provide a variety of free resources to help you with adopting and onboarding the platform. In as little as two weeks, a district can be up and running.

Snap! Connect is the smart solution

To learn more about how Snap! Connect can help your district start a more effective communication and engagement strategy that connects all levels of your district with the families you serve, contact us today.