Improve School Communication with Teachers to Parents Text Messaging

If you’re looking for a way to improve communication from teachers to parents, text messaging platforms like Clerk Chat could be the answer.

Regular, consistent communication between schools and parents has a huge impact on student success. Studies have even shown that good communication contributes to the “parental involvement” in a child’s education that drives higher grades, and improved attendance.

However, old-fashioned communication strategies are often ineffective. Letters sent home with students can be misplaced, emails get lost in inboxes and spam folders, and face-to-face meetings are notoriously hard to schedule. That’s where the option to text parents through a unified platform becomes incredibly valuable.

With an innovative text messaging service for schools you can keep parents informed with messages about grades, school events, and emergencies. Plus, you give caregivers a straightforward way to communicate with your school. It’s a win-win for everyone.

Here, we’ll introduce you to the benefits of sending SMS to parents from schools, cover the types of messages you can send, and share our best practice tips for success.

Struggling to reach and engage parents with traditional communication methods? Clerk Chat offers a modern solution for effective school-to-home communication.

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The Benefits of Sending School Text Messages to Parents

First, let’s explore why SMS improves teacher-parent communication. There are plenty of ways you can use technology to take your school communication strategy to the next level.

Some educators create dedicated school apps and portals to enable digital communication. Others rely on email and schedule meetings with parents via video conferencing platforms. However, while all of these technology-driven strategies have their benefits, SMS is the most versatile, powerful communication channel for schools by far.

With an SMS-driven school communication software, like Clerk Chat, you benefit from:

• Increased deliverability and engagement: Physical newsletters can get lost in backpacks, and emails can get re-routed to spam. SMS gives you a more reliable way to rapidly reach your audience.
• Versatile messaging: You can use SMS to send all kinds of messages to your audience, from parent conference reminder messages to absenteeism alerts, and notifications about a student’s grades or performance. You can even enable 2-way text messaging strategies, to allow for quick one-on-one conversations between teachers and parents.
• Simplified school communication: With a single messaging platform, you can automate and simplify various tasks that would otherwise consume the valuable time of educators. For instance, you can schedule messages to automatically be delivered to parents based on specific triggers and time schedules and even automate various aspects of customer service with AI text messages.
• Opportunities for personalization: With a messaging platform like Clerk Chat, you’ll even be able to create more “personalized” experiences for parents. You can organize parent “cohorts” into groups based on things like student grade or age range. You can even add custom fields to messages so you can always refer to a parent by their name in a message.

7 Teachers to Parents Text Messaging Examples

As mentioned above, one of the biggest benefits of using teachers to parents text messaging campaigns in your communication strategy is that SMS is incredibly versatile. Clerk Chat even offers access to a range of school SMS templates you can customize for different messages such as appointment reminders, notifications about grades, and more.

Here are just some great examples of school text messages to parents you can include in your upgraded communication strategy.

1. School Reopening Messages

It’s easy to lose track of when schools are scheduled to re-open after regular annual breaks, and even unexpected closures. With a mass text messaging service, you can easily remind parents (and students) of when they should be preparing to return to the classroom.

You could even use these messages to provide additional information caregivers might need. For instance, you could include a link to a class timetable for each student, notify parents of any changes in school start or end times, or give them “shopping lists” they can refer to when preparing for the next term. The options are endless.

Sample text: “Hi [Name], this is just a quick reminder to let you know that the school term will be starting for [student name] again at 8:30am on September the 11th. Click the link below for more advice on how to prepare or to download your student’s new schedule [Link].”

2. School Cancellation Messages

Some school closures are predictable and consistent. For instance, the chances are your children will have the same days off for Spring Break and the Winter Holidays each year. However, sometimes educators need to close schools unexpectedly. In these situations, being able to send a text to parents quickly, informing them of the reason for the closure and how long it will last is crucial.

Alerts on sudden school closures can help reduce safety risks. The last thing you need if your school is experiencing a flood, a sudden training day, or another weather-related change, is endless students and parents arriving at your doors.

Sample text: “Important announcement: [School name] will be closed on [Date] due to flooding issues. We apologize for this. The school will be reopened as normal at 8:30am on [Date]. Please text this number back if you need more details.”

3. Absenteeism Notifications

Absenteeism is a common problem among schools worldwide. It’s a particularly significant issue if parents aren’t aware that their children aren’t attending classes as they should be. By enabling teachers to parents text messaging for your school, you create an easy way for educators to keep parents informed and begin investigating absenteeism issues.

Using a standard text message template and an automated workflow, you can even schedule “absenteeism” texts to be delivered instantly to parents whenever a student is “marked absent”.

If a parent responds to one of these messages, identifying it as an “error,” the system can then automatically inform staff members that they need to follow up on the issue.

Sample message: “Hi [Name], [Student name] was marked absent from classes this morning. Please log into the school portal to record a reason for this absence. If you believe this is an error, please respond to this message or call the school.”

4. Reminder Messages

We’ve already mentioned how school text messages to parents can remind them of upcoming term times and “re-opening” schedules. However, there are various other types of reminders you can send caregivers and students alike. For instance you can use an SMS reminder service to remind:

• Students of upcoming homework deadlines, impending texts and examinations, school trips, or extracurricular activities they’ve agreed to attend.
• Parents of upcoming fees required for classes or other expenses.
• Guardians of dates and times for upcoming parent-teacher conferences or meetings, as well as school events, like PTA meetings or fundraisers.

Appointment reminder text messages can be particularly valuable when you want to ensure that teachers and faculty members don’t waste time waiting for parents to attend meetings that they’ve forgotten all about.

Sample Message: “[Name], this is a friendly reminder that you’ve scheduled a meeting with [teacher name] on [date at time] to discuss [student name’s] progress. If you can no longer attend this meeting, please contact the school to rearrange.”

5. Time Sensitive Alerts and Notifications

It’s not just school closures that can happen suddenly in the educational environment, necessitating rapid teachers to parents text messaging conversations. When sudden issues occur, or you need to keep your community informed of potential threats and risks, SMS offers a fast-paced way to share information.

You can use an A2P 10DLC text messaging service to inform parents and students about issues they need to be aware of, like an outbreak of a particular illness among students. You could also use these messages to share extreme weather alerts.

Even if your school isn’t closing, these messages can help parents prepare in advance to navigate difficult conditions on the roads and make sure they can prepare their children with the right clothing and resources.

Sample text: “[Name], high snowfall is expected on [Date]. We plan to open [School] as normal, but recommend starting your journey early based on road conditions. Stay safe during this time.”

6. Student Update Messages

As a school leader or teacher, you shouldn’t just text parents when you have reminders or alerts. SMS can also be a great way to keep caregivers updated on their student’s progress.

You could schedule a text message to reach parents at the end of an examination period, letting them know when grades and scores are available to access on your school portal. You could even share broader messages about the progress of an entire class or group.

For instance, you could text all the parents with students in one age group at once, letting them know that this “group” has achieved record-breaking exam scores.

Bonus tip: make sure parents have a way to respond to your team and request a meeting to discuss ways they can help to improve their child’s academic performance going forward. For instance, you could use an SMS for Microsoft Teams integration to allow users to schedule a video conference with a teacher after their grades have been posted.

Sample text: “Hi [Name], [student name’s] grades for [semester / term] are now available to review on [school portal]. Please log in to download the report. If you have any questions or need to talk to a teacher, you can book a meeting here [link].”

7. Messages to Encourage Parent Engagement

Finally, you can also consider sending SMS to parents from schools when you want to encourage them to engage in more in-depth conversations with your faculty members. You can use school SMS templates on platforms like Clerk Chat to request feedback from parents, or ask them to complete a survey about their experience with your faculty.

Struggling to reach and engage parents with traditional communication methods? Clerk Chat offers a modern solution for effective school-to-home communication.

Schedule a Demo

You could even automatically send messages to parents at certain periods throughout the year, asking them to share the things they like most or least about your school.

This is an excellent way to learn more about how you can differentiate your educational institution from the competition and improve the experience you give to both students and caregivers.

Sample text: “Hi [Name], we’d love to hear more about how we could improve the educational experience for [student name]. If you have a moment, please fill out the survey in the link below to tell us how we can do better. [Link].”

Best Practices for Texting Parents

Sending SMS to parents from schools is an excellent way to boost teacher-parent communication strategies. However, it’s important to remember there are some key practices you’ll need to follow to preserve your school’s reputation and reduce compliance risks.

Here are our best practice tips for success:

• Always get consent: Use SMS Opt-in strategies to gain explicit permission to text parents before you start your campaigns. Give parents the option to “opt out” of receiving certain messages, and ensure they always have another way to contact you.
• Get the timing right: Make sure you send messages at an appropriate time. Generally, the best days and times will be weekdays, between the hours of 8am to 6pm. Try to avoid sending non-urgent messages on holidays, weekends, or at inappropriate times.
• Be clear and concise: Be aware of the character limit you’ll need to adhere to when you send a text to parents. Messages need to be short, sweet, and to the point. Avoid using complex and technical terms that parents might be unfamiliar with.
• Personalize your messages: Invest in SMS personalization. Use custom fields to include the child and parent’s name in each text message. Draw on data to segment your contact lists and send more relevant messages to every group.
• Remember compliance: Aside from ensuring you get consent to message parents, make sure you’re following other compliance laws and regulations. Invest in a solution (like an MS Teams compliance archiving service) to store communications data safely, and avoid sending too much sensitive, personal information over text.
• Allow for two way messaging: Make sure parents have a way to respond to your messages when they need more information. You could even use artificial intelligence in education to create a chatbot that can rapidly answer parent questions on your behalf.

How to Send SMS to Parents from Schools with Clerk Chat

By far, the best way to make sure you get the most out of your teachers to parents text messaging strategy is with the right technology. An all-in-one platform like Clerk Chat doesn’t just give you a convenient way to create automated campaigns and send mass text messages fast.

With Clerk Chat, you can easily organize your contacts into lists, making it easier to send highly personalized messages to each parent, based on a student’s age, classes, and other factors.

Clerk Chat also enables both automated text messaging and two-way SMS, allowing your team members to engage in comprehensive conversations with care providers. Staff members can even learn how to send text messages from MS teams with Clerk Chat, ensuring they have a unified environment for managing text, voice, video, and chat-based communications.

Plus, Clerk Chat’s innovative AI tools make it easier to provide 24/7 support to families through text, personalize campaigns based on real-time and historical data, and so much more.

On top of all that, Clerk Chat follows strict data protection guidelines, offers access to multi-factor authentication capabilities, and leverages encryption to keep your data safe. You can even integrate Clerk Chat with archiving tools to ensure you’re complying with industry standards.

Discover how you can leverage an AI-powered, data-driven platform to text parents in your community, and enhance parent-teacher communication with Clerk Chat.