School Signals fills a space schools find missing:

• District news and announcements
• School-wide, official communication and parent engagement 
• Integrated Volunteering & PTC scheduling across the school
• Strong PTA, Parent Groups and Board tools to activate community
• Classroom communication that is not a silo
• Clubs & Programs for after-school communication

The School Signals platform unifies school communication by bringing the school community together on one platform for all school communication, parent engagement, school events, volunteering, and school and classroom calendars. School Signals is the platform where schools make critical alerts, parents sign up for conferences, engage in volunteer opportunities, and use the app to message their child’s teacher. The platform is easy to navigate, and audience-based settings deliver relevant information.

School Signals uses AI to support content moderation, translation, and post-writing. The AI Assistant helps admins draft posts with tone and clarity, while the AI Monitor ensures posts are appropriate and relevant.  The AI Translate ensures that the needs of families who need communications translated are served. Learn more.

School Signals notifies by SMS text message, voice message, email, and app push notifications. The Critical Alerts feature is designed to notify the school community of urgent updates. In such situations, by law, we reserve the right to override users’ notification preferences.

Absolutely. The Direct Messaging works among all users: school administrators to teachers, teachers to teachers, teachers to parents, parents to teachers, and in multi-user threads. Users get notified by email, and the app pushes new messages.

Yes. Parents set their preferred language in the My Account settings, and the AI Translate automatically translates Private Messages, School Feed news and updates, as well as Classroom and any Group news and updates, into their preferred language. Voice messages using the TTS technology are delivered in the parent’s preferred language.

The Automatic Translations make school communication accessible to multilingual families.

Additionally, Spanish speaking families can use the platform in Spanish — all user interfaces and email notifications are provided in Spanish.

Note: To optimize performance, School Signals sees unnecessary to run codes in the background for languages that are not needed in the school community. By default, we provide translations for the top 11 most commonly spoken languages in the U.S., which cover most school-home communication needs. We will happily add any necessary language to the system upon our customer’s request. Just contact us during your school’s onboarding, and we will complete the task within 24 hours.

When both teachers and parents actively use School Signals, we see how improved communication benefits the classroom and student learning. Here are some examples:

• Parents and teachers message privately using the app.
• The teacher provides prompt and engaging classroom news and updates. Classroom feeds reduce teacher’s workload by having to answer the same question over and over again.
• Parents can see all volunteer opportunities in one place and sign up smoothly.
• Parent-teacher conference sign-ups are coordinated in the same system. Parents can choose their time without back-and-forth.
• Teachers can track all online form submissions, and all form results are located in one place.
• School and classroom directories and customized parent profiles help to understand who is who and create connections.

The School Feed is the communication hub in School Signals. Administrators, teachers, and parents (if permitted) can post within designated audiences: the entire school, specific grade levels, individual classrooms, or groups. Each post connects to a notification sending. School administrators and teachers can schedule posts and utilize the AI Assistant to enhance their post-writing. The AI Content Monitor automatically flags foul language and moves posts for review when needed. Delivery Reports provide accurate data on the reach of posts. Parent engagement features, such as Volunteering, PTC conference sign-ups, and RSVPs for school events, integrate with the feed so that when a new entry is added, it is announced in the School Feed.

The school calendar and school events management are key features in School Signals. You can create events for school-wide happenings or specific grades, classrooms, or groups. RSVP feature is ready to tally and collect attendee lists. Parents can sign up for volunteer opportunities within the event when tasks and responsibilities need to be allocated to ensure the events run smoothly. And don’t forget to include online forms if required. Engagement continues during the event through the Event feed, where members add and share their photos on the event’s Photos page.

Volunteering is one of the most disorganized tasks in schools. Schools may rely on paper-based methods, email threads, third-party websites such as SignUpGenius, Google Forms, or other methods to organize volunteering. While we do not want to discredit these efforts, School Signals brings something unique to the table: a parent account integrated volunteer sign-up system on the platform and app that parents are already regularly using.

From the parents’ point of view, the signup is effortless and takes just a few clicks. The system already recognizes who they are and what grade levels their children attend so that the school platform can supply relevant volunteer opportunities for parents. All parties maintain a record, and recurring signups are fast. You can create volunteer listings as stand-alone opportunities, or you can contextually integrate volunteering into a Classroom, PTA, and school event.

PTAs integrate their work seamlessly on School Signals. Create the PTA group, set whether members can join or need to be approved, and add your member list so that parents and teachers who are already in the PTA get automatic access. PTAs offer a wealth of communication, efficiency, and productivity features, including a discussion feed, document sharing, calendar and events, volunteer listings, online forms, and photo galleries. Members receive notifications with email, text, and app push. Private messaging connects members when needed, too. Learn more.

Yes. School administrators can set the conferences school-wide and announce the dates. Teachers can individually set their availability and customize the duration of each time slot. Parents sign up using an online interface on desktop or mobile. A reminder goes to parents before the start of the conference. Not in the network? Teachers and school admins can create a signup for a parent. Want to collect pre or post-conference feedback? An online form can be prompted to be filled out as step two during the signup. Learn more.

All three. School Signals is designed to support school-wide communication, classroom communication, and parent engagement. School Signals creates a whole ecosystem that serves small classrooms and large districts alike. 

School Signals is a subscription-based service provided to schools. We offer competitive and fair market price, and our pricing is fully transparent. Schools can create a free 30-day trial and select a plan that best suits their needs. Please review our plans & pricing here.

The deployment of School Signals is fast: Once teacher and parent data for accounts are verified, school members are invited to access the platform and login. School administrators can add new content and updates as they become available, both before and after the launch. We offer a free 30-day trial: you can start testing the system in a demo school within minutes. Create a Free Trial account.

School Signals is a technology partner with PowerSchool. Syncing accounts securely from PowerSchool takes just a few steps.  Once authorized, the accounts will sync in just a few minutes. A dedicated onboarding specialist from School Signals oversees that the process is smooth. The API sync feature saves administrators significant time and effort and eliminates the need for parents to register to use the platform.

Additionally, many SIS systems allow for the export of student records and parent data, which can be imported into School Signals for quick account creation. Please get in touch with us and let us know which SIS system your school or district is currently using.

Families can use School Signals without the app. The School Signals system works on desktop, tablet and mobile devices. The School Signals app is recommended for smooth user experience and to unlock app push notifications. The mobile web version is available for users who don’t want to install an app to their phones.