3 Things We Learned From Communications Leaders at NSPRA

by Heather Dooley

The TalkingPoints team caught up with many of our district partners at July’s NSPRA conference in Bellevue, WA. We enjoyed hosting an interactive session with our partners from Seattle Public Schools and San Juan Unified School District (CA), who shared the innovative ways their teams drive outcomes for students. We met innovative communications leaders from across the country and conducted hands-on demos of the new TalkingPoints back-to-school release that includes embedded guidance tools for teachers and families. And we were thrilled to celebrate several TalkingPoints partners who were awarded for their work, including Dirk Tedmon, APR, from Eden Prairie Schools, who was named NSPRA School Communicator of the Year!

At an event replete with highlights, here are 3 key takeaways that stood out:

1) The work of district communications leaders is evolving

In an interactive session, TalkingPoints’ Nancy Bromberger and Simón Miera learned from partner leaders Raj Rai, Director of Communications for San Juan Unified School District (CA), and Sophia Charchuk, Communications Specialist with Seattle Public Schools, about the innovative ways each district thinks about technology, progress, and the role of the communications team in advancing student success.

A Radical Approach to Selecting a Communications Solution

As with many districts, the pandemic ushered in a “Wild West” environment in San Juan Unified School District (CA), with teachers adopting a wide array of different technologies. The district needed to consolidate tools and offer a more consistent experience for families. A diverse district that spans 75 square miles, San Juan Unified’s 64 schools, half of which are Title 1 schools, support 38,000 students who speak 72 different home languages. Family surveys revealed a strong desire for two-way texting with teachers and staff.

For the district, it was a priority to invest in platforms that not only could enable communication but also help drive student success. Director of Communications Raj Rai shared the district’s radical equity-centered process for selecting a communications platform, which involved all stakeholders, including students.

“The ultimate goal of selecting a communications platform is to drive student outcomes.” – Raj Rai

Following a comprehensive RFP process, leaders from multiple departments, support staff, teachers, parents, and students evaluated proposals, engaged in a two-hour demonstration with Q&A from finalist vendors, then ultimately shared in the decision. This rigorous process led to the district selecting TalkingPoints for its advanced translation capabilities, research-based and research-proven platform, and commitment to continued innovation focused on supporting positive student outcomes. In the ‘23-24 school year, families and staff in the district exchanged more than 3 Million messages.

“We were intentional about involving the community and elevating student agency and voice in the decision-making process.” – Raj Rai

Progress starts with shifting mindsets

TalkingPoints partner Seattle Public Schools (SPS) is the largest K-12 school system in Washington state serving a diverse community of 49,000 students in 104 schools, more than one-third of which are Title 1 schools. Students and their families hail from 159 countries and speak 150 home languages. Building effective family-school partnerships is a district strategy for driving student outcomes. SPS Communications Specialist Sophia Charchuk shared the process the district went through when they were looking for a school-based texting solution that addressed the feedback they received from their community. As Sophia noted, guiding their approach was a mindset shift within the district to “recognizing families as one of the most important stakeholders in the work we do.” A top priority was to meet families where they are by centering communication around two-way translated text messaging to remove language and technology barriers such as access to a computer, wifi, or a smartphone.

“Reaching families where they are in their home languages has been a game changer. Families understand our messages. There’s less confusion.” – Sophia Charchuk

Funding a pilot through expansion 

Seattle’s journey started during the pandemic in 2020. The plan was to conduct a one-year district-wide pilot aimed at addressing immediate needs for family engagement during COVID-19, with the option of extension if school leaders found the supports to be valuable. In 2021, the district decided to continue the partnership based on the positive feedback from schools, families and the community. The pilot was funded from ESSER dollars then shifted to using Department of Technology Services funds to expand and sustain the work.

Establishing aligned success indicators

SPS training for school leaders and teachers centered on an asset-based approach to developing meaningful two-way engagement with families at all levels, with an intentional focus on supporting positive student outcomes. The district is committed to making family engagement a strategy for driving student outcomes rather than a goal within itself, and established aligned success indicators, including:

• All staff can use the platform, including nurses, counselors, and family partnership staff so that all families have access to important school resources  
• Family engagement ownership is shared across district departments and schools
• TalkingPoints is a consistent place for families to engage with staff in their home language
• All SPS staff can use TalkingPoints to engage with individual families
• All SPS families can easily participate in two-way engagement to support their student’s success

Learning from staff – in and outside the classroom

Feedback from staff helped affirm and guide family engagement strategies based on what was working. One major initiative in the district was a vaccine compliance campaign. SPS’s Health Services used TalkingPoints to connect with individual families who were out of compliance, many of whom were newcomer families with limited or no English. SPS nurses used TalkingPoints message templates for consistent two-way translated engagement with each family. The program helped not only improve vaccine compliance, but nursing staff shared how these everyday connections with families helped them form trusting relationships with their children’s schools.

“ALL staff are empowered to engage with families directly to build effective partnerships that drive student success.” –  Sophia Charchuk

Learning from families 

SPS wanted to learn from families, but also knew that families did not want “to fill out another survey” so they needed a simple way to gather feedback. The team used TalkingPoints easy, translated polls to gather input from families in their home languages. 

Staff use polls for quick insights into everything from whether a student will need lunch on a field trip, to gauging family interest in after-school activities, to learning whether students are returning the following school year. Because the polls are lightweight and text-based, they’re easier for families to answer so districts and schools can gather quick feedback.

Seattle’s asset-based, inclusive, outcomes-focused approach to family engagement is working for the district; in the ‘23-’24 school year, staff and families exchanged more than 10 million messages!

2) New tech tools can scale comms expertise and help avoid high-stakes PR challenges

One fun experience at NSPRA was a hands-on station where conference attendees could test out Message Mentor, TalkingPoints “AI for Impact” tool that helps staff write best-practice messages.

Message Mentor in Action Educators can click a button to transform a message or offer a prompt and the tool will write an on-the-spot message they can save, send, edit, or discard. NSPRA attendees came and put Message Mentor through its paces – feeding it all kinds of prompts and watching them transform into useful messages to send families. Communications leaders can’t personally train every staff member on how to talk with families, thought they are on the front lines when communication goes awry. We heard excitement from those who tested Message Mentor about how providing all staff with an embedded research-based best practice tool like this could help them guide effective communication practices, prevent PR crises, and free up comms resources for more targeted needs.

We also demoed TalkingPoint’s “Help Me Understand” feature, which gives families a one-click way to get additional context and explanation when they don’t understand a message, paired with suggested next steps for how to respond. They can also request human translation support when needed. And because this tool helps build family capacity through self-serve guidance and support, it also lightens the load on teachers and staff because families can get the help they need to understand key messages without needing additional rounds of communication. 

3) Re-building culture to bring back positivity 

One of the themes we heard throughout the event was addressing the lingering impacts of the pandemic on culture in schools, and the need to bring positivity back. Communications experts were eager to discuss the ways their teams can help shape culture to support this, as well as helping address staff engagement and retention challenges in their districts. Teams were ready to take on this new generation of communications challenges and were looking for opportunities to collaborate with peers and learn about best practices. Embracing technology in more equitable ways also sparked interest, from flagging trigger words in messages to get ahead of and prevent a crisis, to adopting more accessible tools like translated audio and video messaging to humanize and personalize communication. 

Also inspiring was the ways in which communications leaders spoke about their role in driving culturally responsive and sensitive school-family engagement practices as a key to improving student outcomes. We heard a lot of support for shifting thinking within districts and schools from “involving” families to “engaging” families and really focusing on partnerships aimed at supporting students.

And, we were thrilled to celebrate several TalkingPoints partners who were awarded for their work, including Dirk Tedmon, APR, from Eden Prairie Schools, who was named NSPRA School Communicator of the Year, and Golden Achievement award winners Raj Rai and Elysse Fresquez from San Juan Unified School District and Karen Geddeis from Leyden High School District 212!

In his acceptance speech, Dirk Tedmon summed up many of the key conference themes when he spoke of the work of his peers as joy-spreaders and change-makers… not why-askers:

“Doing this great, and meaningful, and difficult, and rewarding, and exhausting, and beautifully complicated work every day. And instead of sitting in why, choose to keep moving forward in making a meaningful impact.” – Dirk Tedmon

We couldn’t agree more.

TalkingPoints is an education technology nonprofit with a mission to improve student outcomes by unlocking the superpower of effective family-school partnerships. The TalkingPoints Universal Family Engagement platform combines access for all families regardless of barrier or circumstance with embedded research-based guidance for educators, actionable data-informed insights, and universally designed two-way auto-translated preferred language communication. Ten of the country’s twenty largest school districts trust TalkingPoints to create a culture where all families, no matter their background, can meaningfully partner in their children’s education. See how TalkingPoints can support your community.