At a Glance
Putnam City Schools serves over 19,000 students in grades K-12 across 27 schools in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The district’s diverse student body reflects the richness of the community, with 72 languages spoken within its 47-square-mile boundaries.
The district is committed to providing a quality education for every student, with a strong emphasis on the importance of school-to-family connections and relationship building.
As stated in their Parent Engagement Policy, “When schools and parents form strong partnerships, all students’ potential for academic success improves significantly.”
Putnam City Schools’ Commitment to Family-School Partnerships
Since partnering with TalkingPoints in 2021, Putnam City Schools has seen firsthand the power of building strong school-family partnerships.
The district has empowered teachers and staff to foster relationships with families through the TalkingPoints platform, which combines best-in-class K-12 translations with the three core components of Universal Family Engagement:
- Embedded Best Practices: Built-in family engagement expertise and research-based guidance develop staff capacity and promote best practice engagement.
- Scaled Family Engagement: TalkingPoints’ universally designed platform enables equitable access to build relationships with all families.
- Data-Informed Guidance: Actionable, improvement-centered tools motivate engagement and target areas of needed support.
Upping the game with real-time Document Translation
When TalkingPoints introduced its document translation feature, Putnam City Schools saw an opportunity to make a meaningful difference for families, ensuring equitable access to information from teachers and staff.
TalkingPoints’ Document Translation empowers school staff to seamlessly translate everyday “backpack” documents, such as newsletters, flyers, and invitations, into each family’s preferred language with just one click.
These important communications are then automatically translated and sent directly to families through TalkingPoints, ensuring everyone stays informed and connected, no matter their language.
This feature also allows the district to free up valuable translation resources for more specialized needs, such as translating legal documents or providing in-person interpretation. It ensures that every family can access the information they need to support their child’s education and engage in school activities.
Engagement Success!
Before piloting the Document Translation feature, Putnam City Schools set clear criteria for success. As Wendi Tejada, the EL Facilitator, explains, the district prioritized:
“Building trust even more. We’ve seen an increase in family-teacher engagement, but want to see all of our families have a seat at our table, feel listened to and that they have an opportunity to give feedback. We want them to have an opportunity they wouldn’t have had before and to be actively engaged.”
The district ran a three-month pilot, during which more than 260 teachers, administrators, and staff members used TalkingPoints Document Translation to share over 800 documents with families via TalkingPoints message attachments. These documents included newsletters, flyers, invitations, family resources, and permission slips—everyday communications that families rely on.
The feedback was overwhelmingly positive. More than 80% of teachers and staff reported being “happy” or “extremely happy” with the document translation experience, citing its ease and effectiveness in bridging language gaps.
“We’re impressed! Some of the things we send out just don’t get translated, and we’re building this communications gap that the TalkingPoints Document Translation helps bridge. “ [We are] constantly thinking about the families we’re not reaching consistently, this is a powerful way to help that.”
– Gregory Kehring, Elementary Technology Coach, Menasha Joint School District
Families using the TalkingPoints Family app also expressed their appreciation for the ability to view attached documents in their preferred language and English. This dual-language feature proved invaluable, particularly for families who rely on older, English-proficient children to help interpret information. Having both language options made it easier for families to fully understand the materials and feel more connected to the school community.
Native American Student Services Team Calls TalkingPoints “A Game-Changer!”
For the Native American Student Services team at Putnam City Schools, TalkingPoints has been nothing short of a game-changer. The team transitioned from using a paper rolodex with over 600 student and family contacts to leveraging TalkingPoints’ group features to manage two-way communication with the families they serve.
The document translation feature quickly proved its worth.
At the end of each school year, the district hosts a youth powwow as part of their family and community engagement efforts. In the past, sending event flyers home in students’ backpacks didn’t yield much response. But when the team sent a reminder through TalkingPoints, the phones started ringing off the hook, with families eager to sign up. They received more RSVPs than ever before for the event.
“It’s so much more targeted towards all of our families, and all of our families really have that seat at the table. Everybody can read that flier, see that newsletter.”
– Wendi Tejada
The success of this family engagement platform has been transformative for the team. By removing language, technological, and situational barriers, TalkingPoints has helped them reach families in a way they never could before. The Native American Student Services team is now planning to expand its use of TalkingPoints over the summer and into the next school year to share important information like tutoring opportunities and school supply availability—details that were once shared only by word of mouth or crumpled paper at the bottom of a backpack.
About TalkingPoints
TalkingPoints is an education technology nonprofit with the mission to drive student success by unlocking the superpower of effective family-school partnerships. The TalkingPoints award-winning Universal Family Engagement platform helps educators improve student and district outcomes through scalable, research-based best practices for family engagement. Across districts nationwide, TalkingPoints has empowered more than five million educators and families, facilitating nearly one billion conversations that drive student success.
Named by Common Sense Education as “the best overall family communication platform for teachers and schools,” TalkingPoints leads to gains in attendance rates and academic performance, as shown by rigorous, externally validated causal research. To learn more, view our TED Talk or visit talkingpts.org.
