This week on School Stream, we have a special guest. We recently spoke to a dynamic Business Manager at a Queensland school about how the app has made things easier in her day-to-day life. We think you will enjoy hearing from her as much as we enjoyed speaking with her.
A big thank you to this week’s guest for taking the time to share her insights with us.
We’re here for you. Learn more about how we can support School Administration Officers and Business Managers or keep reading for our informal and insightful chat with a Business Manager.
In Conversation with a Business Manager
“We were getting feedback from our parents that they didn’t know what was happening around the school and that our lack of communication was letting us (the school) down. So we implemented School Stream and we’re super impressed. The majority of our parents were already comfortable with using apps on their device so have thought nothing of downloading a school app to stay in the loop.”
“We have almost 600 parents using it in a school of 495 students!”
“We want our parents to be able to find everything they need to know about the school on the School Stream app. It’s our one point of contact.”
“It’s so easy. Some of the administrators who did the initial setting up of the app and who do the majority of posts had a bit of a training – but the teachers who are too busy for that (the training), have picked it up so quickly and use it to do a weekly class update. They create posts for us to check and publish but soon they will be able to do it all by themselves.”
“On Saturday when we heard we were going into lockdown, it was super easy for us to communicate with our families.
“From home we were able to send out a post saying that only the children of essential workers were to be at school on Monday and Tuesday.”
“The push notification chimes let them know when there is a new message for them to read.”
“Newsletters are a thing of the past”
“We used to publish fortnightly newsletters, but it was all old news rather than what was up and coming; and there was certainly no easy method of letting parents know if upcoming details had changed. With School Stream we can send out notices as soon as we have the information to hand. It’s super quick and easy, as opposed to writing a newsletter and waiting to have that approved.”
“Now we can give news as it happens – on the fly –it’s much more up to date. It would take a whole day to write the newsletter – and it was already old news, reporting what had happened. It’s become so much easier to get all of our new information out.”
“The other issue was that as the school grew, it became increasingly difficult to email newsletters to all of our parents. There is a limit of 400 recipients per email so we would have to send several emails to capture everyone.”
“The other thing we love and use regularly are the forms.”
“Say Year 5 are going on an excursion, we send all the permission forms out on School Stream to just our Year 5 parents, they complete and sign them and send them straight back (digitally). They also tend to do it as soon as they get the notification. It’s much quicker and easier, as opposed to the old method where you would have to run off paper copies, rely on the students to take them home, get them signed and then remember to bring them back!”
(* Interview edited for clarity)
Once again, thank you so much for sharing your insights and experiences with us. We are so pleased to play a part in supporting communication at your school.
Please get in touch if you would like to learn more about how we help your school communicate easily in real time.
