For schools and districts, communication has never been more important — or more fragmented.
Managing attendance outreach, school and districtwide communication, and classroom communication across multiple tools creates extra work for educators and staff, and an inconsistent, confusing experience for families.
For the 2026–27 school year, TalkingPoints continues to bring together all essential communications into one unified solution that families and educators know and trust. This year, we’re also introducing Professional Learning Services to help districts maximize their investment with tailored onboarding and support designed around their needs.
Together, these solutions and services help schools and districts create stronger connections across the entire school community while ensuring every family can participate in every conversation. New capabilities for the upcoming school year are designed to strengthen family-school partnerships, improve attendance, support academics at home, and drive better outcomes for all students.
Read on to learn more about:
- How to finally move the needle on chronic absenteeism
- Bringing your district’s curriculum into the home for PreK–3 students and families
- Reaching every family across every channel and in every language – a solution for all critical communication
- Ensuring no essential document gets lost in translation
Helping Districts Improve Attendance Through Stronger Family Partnerships
Districts across the country continue to struggle with absenteeism. Many existing attendance tools simply aren’t delivering the results districts need, with one in four students remaining chronically absent nationwide.
Traditional robocalls, email, and one-way notifications may alert families to absences, but they rarely create the two-way communication needed to build trust, foster dialogue, and help students get back on track.
TalkingPoints helps drive the family engagement needed to improve attendance. It begins by reaching families where they are through a text-first communication model — with no apps or logins required. Every two-way message is also supported by industry-leading translation, helping schools reach families in their home languages. With these essentials in place, schools can focus on providing the right support instead of chasing families through unanswered voicemails and emails.
TalkingPoints Attendance Improvement Plus combines tiered, targeted outreach with data-informed attendance strategies that help schools proactively support consistent attendance improvement.
Highlights include:
- Reach the students and families who need it most with tiered, targeted messaging that prioritizes students most at risk.
- Get a clearer picture of every student’s attendance with individualized profiles and actionable, data-supported insights that surface clear next steps.
- Give staff time back with streamlined attendance tools that eliminate manual, time-consuming outreach.
- Make smarter decisions with dashboards and absence trend analysis that reveal what’s driving absenteeism.
New! Academics at Home for Literacy & Math
Extending Learning Beyond the Classroom
Launching for back-to-school 2026-27, TalkingPoints Academics at Home helps schools extend learning beyond the classroom with PreK-3 literacy and math activities delivered by text message.
Academics at Home aligns to your district’s curriculum, providing families and caregivers with easy, fun, and engaging activities to do at home — with no additional teacher prep required.
Families don’t need a special app or login. Activities are sent home weekly, translated into families’ home languages, and aligned to teacher pacing, making it easier for families to support what’s happening in the classroom, building positive learning habits along the way.
Highlights include:
- Give teachers a simple way to extend learning at home with PreK–3 literacy and math activities that are ready to send, with no additional prep required.
- Remove barriers for every family — no apps, no logins, no special materials, just simple, fun, engaging activities delivered by text in their home language.
- Extend your district’s curriculum into the home so families are reinforcing what students are learning in the classroom.
Unified Emergency Alerts & District Communications
Schools and districts need a reliable system for urgent, comprehensive districtwide communication. Whether responding to an unexpected weather event or sending a monthly update, school and district leaders need tools that can help them communicate quickly and efficiently, across the entire school community from families to staff to teachers.
For the 2026–27 school year, we’ve expanded the capabilities of TalkingPoints Emergency Alerts & District Communications. Now schools and districts can send alerts and announcements across text, call, email, web, and social channels — all from within the TalkingPoints solution and in families’ home languages.
Beyond alerts and announcements, TalkingPoints now helps districts manage many of the everyday communication workflows including:
- Simplify sensitive document delivery with secure sending for legal docs, report cards, and more.
- Eliminate paper-chasing with digital forms, e-signatures, and permission slips families can complete right from their phones.
- Keep your community informed and on-brand with customizable newsletter and HTML email templates for teachers, schools, and districts.
Learn more about TalkingPoints Emergency Alerts & District Communications.
Stronger Family Engagement, Every Day
TalkingPoints has always believed that strong family partnerships are built through consistent, positive communication. TalkingPoints Foundations makes that easier for educators and school leaders every day.
As we look ahead to the new school year, we’re continuing to evolve the solution used by one in four schools nationwide.
- Quick Kudos lets teachers send positive shout-outs home in just a few clicks.
- Family Check-Ins keep families in the loop with research-backed, seasonal messages aligned to the school year.
- AI-powered message tagging helps schools track and encourage the kind of positive communication that builds lasting family trust.
If you’d like to learn about TalkingPoints, set up a short call. If you’re an existing partner, you can reach us at partners@talkingpts.org.
