ParentLink® Announces Major New Release in ParentLink 9

PROVO, Utah, June 5, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- ParentLink® today announced the release of its latest product, ParentLink 9. The result of months of development and partnerships with districts around the country, ParentLink 9 is a dramatic step forward in parent and community relationship management. Educators have long sought ways to create "educational communities," where the various stakeholders in a child's education are all brought together to provide the support needed. ParentLink 9 gives district administrators everything they need in order to create those educational communities. It also provides the leadership tools so that administrators will know what to do, when.

"We are extremely excited to be deploying ParentLink 9," said Dr. Gordon Pritz, superintendent of schools at Douglas County School System in Douglasville, GA. "Obviously, it is important that we can communicate effectively when there is an emergency. But it is even more important that we can provide the right kind of communication to our parents about the progress of their children in school. It is obvious to me that with ParentLink 9 we will be able to reach every segment of our community with the right information in the right way. These services will truly help bring our communication into the 21st century."

ParentLink 9 provides a comprehensive set of integrated communication and leadership tools including ParentLink's well-known outreach messaging platform. New to ParentLink 9 is the following:

• Mobile App for Parents and Community Members—With this smartphone app, parents, students, and interested community members can have all of your district information at their fingertips. Users will have access to news, calendars, sports, messages, directories, a Tip Line, and all of the district's social media (Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, etc.), accessible anytime, anywhere. Parents can login and have access to all of the important information relating to their child's education: messages, grades, assignments, attendance, account balances, and more. Parents can also set alerts to notify them of grade changes, missed assignments or attendance violations. Parents can also access this information through our web portal.
• Mobile App for Administrators—This is the fastest, most convenient way for school administrators to create, send and track messages, without the need to be at a computer with Internet access. In a matter of seconds, a message can be created and sent to individuals, groups, classes, schools, or even the entire district.
• Administrator Dashboard—With this view, administrators will be able to see at a glance how well the communication programs are working at the district. The dashboard will aggregate metrics from several areas such as Parent Usage, Community Usage, Teacher Usage and School Usage, and compare those to GPA and attendance data so that administrators will immediately know how the communications are impacting student achievement.
• Tip Line—Community members, parents, students and staff can now all submit tips with ParentLink 9. The tip line allows users to submit tips anonymously or with contact information via phone, text, website or mobile app so everyone can send a tip in the manner they are comfortable. All tips are sent to a person selected by the district for quick and appropriate response.
• Attendance Management—With ParentLink, administrators will be able to identify, track and communicate with at-risk parents and their parents. The attendance management features will help administrators identify attendance trends and find out what's working and why.
• Teacher Messaging—Teachers want to communicate with parents, but just don't have the time or the right tools. With ParentLink, teachers can use our drag-and-drop interface to select messages from our extensive message library, either for the entire class or for selected individuals.
• Surveys—You can quickly and easily obtain feedback from your parents, students, staff, even your entire community, with our built-in survey capability. Ask as many questions as you want via multiple choice, true/false, free-form, and more.

All of those services and technologies are included in the ParentLink 9 package. Also included is ParentLink's unique DataLink service, which makes integration with a district's various data systems quick and easy.

"We have been innovating in the K-12 industry for more than 20 years and we are thrilled to be releasing ParentLink 9 today," said John Graff, President at ParentLink. "After working with thousands of different schools and districts, we understand that building effective parent relationships requires more than just sending out notifications. To be effective, school administrators need to be able to communicate the right information at the right time and in the right way. Today's parents and community members expect a much richer communication experience. And when they get it, they become much more involved and student achievement increases. ParentLink 9 is unique; nobody else is offering a service as all-inclusive or as powerful."

ParentLink 9 is available immediately. For more information, please visit: http://www.parentlink.net.

About ParentLink^®

ParentLink is the complete communication solution for education, providing the tools to link schools, parents, students, and the community in one common objective—to create educational communities. Exclusively serving the K-12 market for over 20 years, ParentLink provides administrators with a communication platform that will keep parents engaged and students achieving. ParentLink is the central communications hub for all of a district's various information systems, allowing educators to communicate the right information in the right way and at the right time. Every week, thousands of schools use ParentLink to securely send millions of messages to students, parents, and the community, in the form of phone calls, emails, SMS text messages, Facebook and Twitter posts, printed letters, and fax messages, or via the web. ParentLink is the all-in-one communication solution, helping educators improve parental outreach efforts and enjoy the benefits of increased student achievement.

Media Contact:
Mark G. Child
[email protected]
+1.801.373.9669 x203

SOURCE ParentLink