Kings Canyon Unified School District

Kings Canyon Unified School District: 99% Contactability Where 85% of Families Qualify for Free Lunch

Location

Reedley, CA

Type

District comprised of 22 schools

Students

10,000 FRL: 85.5% | ELL: 26.5%

Reimagining School-Home Communication for Every Family

Kings Canyon Unified School District, located in Reedley, CA, knew that unifying their parent communication was essential. In August 2019, the communications officer conducted a district-wide communications audit, meeting with every principal and parent group over several weeks to evaluate how they interacted with the district and how they wanted to receive district messages.

The audit confirmed what had been predicted: communications were decentralized, and messaging was often inconsistent. Ensuring communications equity was also difficult, as there was little or no insight into who received communications and no established process to measure messaging effectiveness.

The onset of the pandemic solidified the need for a unified communications platform when students had to transition to remote learning almost overnight. And when the district was able to file for a waiver to return to an in-person/hybrid model in October 2020, it needed a solution to safely screen students for COVID-19 symptoms each day before school.

Multiple Modes of Communication

With every school site using its own channels to communicate, it was difficult for parents to navigate the various tools and platforms, and the district had no administrative oversight of communications.

Additionally, Kings Canyon USD lies in the heart of California’s San Joaquin Valley—one of the country’s largest agricultural hubs—and many parents work in the industry, with little to no access to a desktop computer during the day.

Language Barriers

Kings Canyon USD has a large English Language Learners (ELL) community, with Spanish as the most common language spoken after English. The district already had an established manual process to consistently deliver messages, PDFs, and documents in English and Spanish.

However, administrators were looking for a more efficient way to translate documents and families found it cumbersome to sift through messages to find documents in their native language. A growing number of non English-speaking parents in the school community also showed a need to communicate in other languages to ensure all parents could engage.

Need for Accuracy and & Insights

Kings Canyon USD knew that they needed a way to ensure contact data accuracy for its families, and to determine the effectiveness of communications, because they lacked analytics to show who they were and were not reaching. Without knowing if emails or texts were failing or if parents were simply not responding to messages, the district could not create workable strategies to fix data or reach those parents in alternative ways.

Implementing a COVID-19 Screening to Return to Campus

Like many states, California requires that all staff and students complete a daily health screening form if they are going on site. Kings Canyon USD needed an efficient health screening process that tracked COVID-19 exposures or confirmed cases prior to bringing its students back to school after months of remote learning.

Connecting Every Family Through One Platform

Kings Canyon USD selected ParentSquare’s unified communications platform to re-imagine every aspect of its school-to-home communications. The district consolidated multiple modes of communication, increased the accuracy of contact data, and added both administrative oversight and security. And when it came time to return to in-person learning, Kings Canyon USD was prepared with an established COVID-19 health screening process for a safe return.

Here’s how they did it:

The Impact Across 22 Schools

Unified Communications With Administrative Oversight

All district and school communications are accessible via the ParentSquare website or mobile application. With a unified communications platform, parents now go to one place for everything they need. What’s more, staff has new administrative oversight into all communications.

Equitable Communications for All

Kings Canyon USD now knows which families they are not reaching and can take action to establish a connection. The instant two-way translation feature ensures that ELL families can receive and send messages in their preferred language, encouraging greater engagement with their child’s education.

Cleaner, More Accurate Data For 99-100% Contactability Rates

During the implementation process, ParentSquare worked closely with Kings Canyon USD to capture accurate and up-to-date contact information for all families. The district reports that most of its schools are at an impressive 99-100% contactability rate and attributes much of its success to having a solid implementation plan with the ParentSquare team.

COVID-19 Compliant Health Screening Process

Along with other district-wide safety measures, the Health Screening Form is an important way that Kings Canyon USD keeps its community safe. Students and staff feel more comfortable returning to an in-person/hybrid learning scenario, knowing that those around them do not exhibit symptoms or have recorded exposure to COVID-19. With a strong plan in place for handling pandemic-related safety guidelines, Kings Canyon USD has zero reported cases of COVID-19 transmission since returning to in-person instruction.