As a school administrator you don’t just “set the bar”, you have to create it every day. Between managing and motivating staff, ensuring curriculum is taught appropriately, managing discipline issues, facility requirements, fighting for and protecting your budget, personnel issues, traffic, safety, overbearing and unengaged parents to appeasing the school board or district, all the while trying to fulfill the altruistic goal of a job well done….I just realized your can be extremely difficult . But, Golden Rule Signs can help, rather teach something that can help.
Many of these issues can be lessened by leveraging communication. One of the most powerful communication tools you can have is an L.E.D. school sign. If you already have one, great, this is for you. If you don’t – take a minute to read this article and lets discuss getting you in to the 21st century.
How much is too much? Keep your messages short and concise. A static title on the top line with a changing message on the lines below helps frame and provide context with just enough detail to peak interest. (top line) “Parent Involvement” (lower lines) “Flower Bed Clean-up Saturday 9am Free Breakfast!” Don’t think that would work? Principal Will Robey at Cuba Elementary had 30 parents showed up with their kids on a beautiful spring morning for free food and 1 hour of work.
Roughly 8 in 10 parents are unengaged from their child’s school. I don’t think there is a single administrator or teacher who would disagree that even the smallest bit of positive parental involvement and interest in their children’s education improves that child’s success as a student.
Unfortunately, there are some parents who do not make an effort to understand, help or support their child. Sad, but true. By and large, however, most parents would gladly do anything to help, love, and encourage their child especially if you make it clear and easy for them.
Based on some web surfing, these are some of the top reasons for disengaged parents:
- Intimidating, insecure or unpleasant memories of school
- Distance between them and their children
- Only get involved if there’s a problem
- Infrequent communication from the school
- Not available/no time – ‘Occasional Parenting’
- Language barrier
An L.E.D. school sign can not fix all these problems, BUT by promoting activities that can be attended by both parents AND children, making the activity well known, easy to attend and enticing is a big step in not only bringing parents together with their children but also accomplishing something for the school itself. In this digital age, many working moms and dads have a smart phone. Do you have a Facebook, Twitter, or Web Page for the school? How many parents subscribe to its notifications? If it is effective, advertise it on your L.E.D. sign and get more subscribers. Then they are getting hit with information during pick-up/drop-off via the L.E.D. sign and also on their phone during a coffee break at work. Belt and suspenders.
Leverage Messages for Involvement
Leverage the scheduling feature in our software. If you normally rotate 15 random messages on your sign but there is a basketball game next Friday night and you want to increase attendance, use the scheduling feature to suspend the “Welcome to Kennedy High School” and other generic messages that week and copy/paste the “What are you doing Friday night? Boys Basketball, 7pm – Go Dragons! Tickets on sale now” Then schedule that message to be featured for the entire week before the event. After the event, it will return to displaying its other scheduled items.
Strategies for Communicating Effectively by Using an L.E.D. School Sign
Keep it short: Short blasts of info are better than reading a novel.
Leverage the software features: Message scheduling, animations, effects, and more!