ParentSquare App Reviews

Please change it back. Since splitting the patent and staff accounts it’s been a mess at our school. Especially since it was done with no notice. So the start of the year with my staff account sending messages to other parents as a parent and then to staff as staff, now I cannot interact as a parent on the previous interactions because I have no kids on that account, I can only take pills or fill out forms on my other one, so I have to ask them to uninvite my staff account and reinvite my parent account. It’s not convenient, we don’t need them separate. If a school does need it separate, then make it an option for each school to choose. Don’t make it across the board mandatory for all users.

Could be better. I have two main issues with this app. The first one is that I cannot schedule messages in the app only posts, this is possible in the desktop side, but not in the app. The second thing, is that I am not able to invite parents to join, since everything is connected and preloaded from the district, I cannot personally send an invitation to parents to join. Many parent in my class receive emails and messages through texts, but are not able to log into the app and they are missing communications from me and the school. Also, moving from using ClassDojo to this app is a huge change since it doesn’t have a reward system built-in and now I have to use two different apps.

Parent square is a good tool. Parent square seems to be a good tool for parents and teacher to communicate, however I still don’t know where or what I am suppose to do to see their report cards. Kids are in 3rd grade and still don’t know what their grades are. Not very user friendly if not familiar with any of the school software programs. Wouldn’t be all that difficult to print an example out on what to do etc. after all handbooks aren’t printed anymore they surely could give examples out during the first meet the teacher or when parents go a school function. The district wants parents to be more involved and they need to be but there should be support for the parents in order to learn what needs done. And back to report cards, this takes away from having something to look back on when one gets older. I still have some of mine. Seems like it means more to have something physical to see verses looking at a screen and think whatever.

3.5. Super helpful but has way too many hiccups in the process. It will not load messages in a timely manner, while using it will kick you out of the app and some other annoying things. Happens regularly enough for me to count on it to happen. There is a huge need for a reliable app that can efficiently spread news to parents about their kids and their schools and I worry that in case of an emergency this app will completely crash just given it’s performance with routine type stuff. I really hope this is taken as constructive criticism and that can help improve the app because, like I said, there is a huge need for a good, reliable and efficient app.

Limited and Dangeous notification system. I would this app even less stars if I could. I am a grandmother who is an emergency contact for my 3 grandkids. I live three minutes away from them and help with car pools and other care giving because both parents work and are at times out of town. I am an emergency contact with the schools but if the school uses this app I am not notified. This app DOES NOT ALLOW parents to add other caretakers to it, so when notiications and emails are sent I am not informed. Parents have to forward notifications to me, which is dangerous and really problematic if they are in meetings and cannot focus on their phones. I pray there is not an earthquake or shooting when this app decides I cannot be notified. Who are you to say only parents can be added to your app?

Mostly really pleased, with a few hiccups. I’m generally happy with the app, just a couple annoyances: 1) Notifications. My high schooler is often tardy. When he is, I get an alert. I appreciate that part! But after I see the alert, it stays marked with a red unread-style dot, both within the app and on my phone app icon. It will stay that way for an undetermined amount of time, sometimes only a day or two, sometimes up to a week. No matter how many times I click in and out, swipe to refresh, etc, it stays. That means that I get used to seeing the red alert and don’t notice when something important happens. Very aggravating! 2) Appreciating posts. You can’t do it from the Home feed, it has to go into the specific message. When you are there, you can’t click the heart, that’s not activated, you have to click the word “Appreciate” on the other side of the screen. Not at all intuitive and requires multiple unneeded steps. 3) Group Messages. I often want to loop two teachers into the same conversation, but it doesn’t allow for group messages. For example, at our elementary the students each have two teachers. I have to copy and paste the same message to both, and they don’t see each other’s responses, so work is often duplicated unnecessarily. In the middle school my son has a 504, but I can’t communicate one message to all the teachers at once. I gave up on ParentSquare and use email.

Needs more Work. Love the app since we can work with teacher communication and school event plus more. Now what needs works: its so easy to add students and school to the app but you all make it hard to remove students once once they are no longer in ones house hold (it be foster home, divorce or ect) and thats when the other person who’s trying to log in get access and then try’s to changea specific students email verification it changes EVERYONES, and then the main person who opens the account no longer has access making it to the point that now I have to call the schools and find a way to fix or find a solution. And there is no way to contact the person who made this app to fix it (no email or phone number). You really have to go threw the schools. PLEASE FIX THIS SMALL FLAW TO WHERE WE CAN ADD AND REMIVE STUDENTS FROM THE APP.

Bugs, Duplicate notifications, a hindrance to simplicity. The well intentioned developers behind this app have forgotten that most teachers and parents are not savvy users excited to explore their way through a new approach to critical communication. Old methods will still be used to fill in the gaps. That may be gaps in ParentSquare, teacher knowledge or skill, or technical limitations. This means things like Canva, PDF’s, Word DocX, HTML, and links out to other unmanaged content will persist in use. Using unmanaged content systems or external sources erodes what should have been the key benefits of a comprehensive insular system. In concept this should be a great tool for improving the quality of communication between staff and parents. In practice, however, it’s only a new email provider. An expensive, overly complicated email system with all the potential for abuse email and now a false assurance of privacy and security.

Ok to use but needs more functions. I appreciate having a platform for school communications in one place. However, it’s hard to find info or to search for posts. If there is a new comment/update to a post there’s no way to know other than searching for the post and to open the comments. It would be helpful if the post went to the top if there was new activity/comments or an indicator for “new comment”. I’d like to be able to tap on a profile to see their info (who their child is, their contact info or posting activity etc). Posting a photo within a comment would be helpful too (now you have to create a whole new post to add a photo). Also, posting a link within a comment doesn’t seem as straightforward either (you have to leave the app for the website). It’s a simple app that could be more useful with a few more functionalities. Please make improvements!

Excellent source of communication!. I am very pleased with the Parent Square app. The app gives parents and teachers the ability to communicate with each other in the most simple way! Being able to speak with the Teachers directly and know that I will receive and immediate response, has really been very helpful with my Daughters education...Especially on days that I have concerns about my Daughter after dropping her off to school. The app is also the easiest resource to get all important notifications and reminders for parents within the school and/or district wide. The app is easy to navigate and definitely important for parents to have to allow us to be the most involved with our children and their education.

Good and bad. Useful for communication and updates, However, staff are unable to troubleshoot, understand and correct. Reached out multiple times to fix issue of log on (separate parents one child). We each have our own log on-as we should have all same access to account and info in regards to our child, school, teacher and education l. However, when one parent logs on it kicks other one off, must reset passcode each time. (So each day a post is made it has to be rest.) We can’t do separate accounts for one child as this would limit each parent’s communication and updates with School/teacher, nor should it be teachers responsibility to post twice. Log on needs to allow each parent their log on to same account with child(ren). Yes, sharing one log on would seem ideal-and offered to the other parent, but so goes our society of co-parenting. We are not the only separated parents or unique circumstances to this. Please fix.

Streamlined communication. The best part of this app is the ability to see notifications quickly across all my kids schools. I love that they can send files and that I can view them through the app or download them as needed. ***At least, THAT is how it worked all last year. Now I can’t see pdf documents at all as a preview. I have to download them. It’s super annoying. Please fix this issue as I know I am not the only one. *** This app is so much better than a certain app that out school uses for assignments. The communication ease and ability to quickly find announcements makes this a breeze for busy parents.

So much trouble. I think the concept is a good one however, the system is constantly kicking out parents so they are not receiving any posts from me, (their child’s teacher) but they get emails from the school office. It takes a few times to put them in the system before they even receive an email. Then I have parents contact me who have been in the system and have received all the emails all year long who are getting kicked out and not receiving emails anymore. And it is a bummer that teacher’s can’t just add the parents/students into the system on our own. We have to call the school office and they have to contact PS to add parents/students. It makes the process longer and sometimes we have to ask again and again for a parent to be added because it doesn’t work the first or second time. Plus, as a parent in the district and an educator in the district, I can only see and posts for my classroom student’s. I cannot see anything for my own children who are at different schools in the district. I get the emails for my own children, however, if I click on an attachment or form or picture through the email, it takes me back to my teacher account and I can never see the links for my own children. Super frustrating.

My favorite. PS is a great tool! I’m also on class Dojo and Remind, but PS is my favorite. I receive notifications immediately and new feed pops up first, whether it’s from the teachers and/or administrators or education board, and you don’t have to go back and forth switching between them all. Messages are easy to convey and receive with no glitches—no complaints whatsoever! So happy my daughter’s school switched! Some people have complained that there is info overload, but if you’re a parent of multiple children in different schools with extracurricular activities, many reminders (even if they’re repetitive) are much appreciated!!! Thank you ParentSquare—keep up the great work!!!

Great way of communicating!. I love and appreciate Parent Square. It’s a great way to stay up to date with pretty much everything going on with my kids’ schools, receive messages from teachers and vice versa. If ever I have any questions regarding a post, I ask—through the comments sections—and get a response fairly quickly. Overall it’s perfect for communicating and staying on the know. It’s also straight forward and easy to navigate and use. (As with all other sites/apps you do need a good working device and connection/internet for it to function properly.)😊

Too cumbersome. If I was in 1 building and not a parent and a teacher I might like it. However. I work in 4 buildings and cannot combine my groups so I must send messages to students in each of my 3 elementary buildings separately . The posts come separately from each building and you must log into that building in order to see the messages and posts. There is no central location. I have a daughter in the 4th building I work in. So I get the posts -too many- from her building admin, teachers, and my students and parents. My other daughter attends the 5th building in our district. So your see there is a Constant stream of texts coming to parent square. I receive emails telling me I have a parent square and texts telling me to check parent square. Too much to keep track of. I have asked my students’Parents about it. Their students have been reminded but still miss remote classes so I asked. The parents of children in separate buildings tell me they don’t pay attention to it. They get too many texts and cannot access them easily. So, I give it a 3 because it is useful, but not very friendly for teachers in multiple buildings or for parents with more than 1 or 2 children

ParentSquare. I am so impressed by the interactive notifications, either important or just informative pieces of info. My Bruin is a freshman and I can't tell you how many times I've been reminded by this email The Parents Square of things, that my 14 year old hasn't quite gotten the reminder button working in his brain to share with me. I love it!!! I appreciate all the teachers, leaders and really the students that work hard to help other students!! This act of kindness says a lot for the Ponderosa Bruins as a team!!! I'm a Cougar in my heart, class of 75, (yikes), but I truly truly love the Ponderosa Bruins, and am proud to say I'm also a Bruin at heart!!! Great job everyone...

Harmful to Education. This system, which our school district spent millions purchasing, is so dysfunctional that teachers and students are spending the majority of their time creating work arounds rather than learning substantive subjects. My own parent system has not worked for weeks now and rather than helping me directly or allowing our school district to help directly our school district is having to act as a go between. I tried to find a contact number to call the company directly but none is available (411 couldn’t even find a number). They want me to log on for assistance and I would if I could but logging on is the problem. This is the legal system of record for our county but since the teachers, students and parents are often unable to use it consistently and are resorting to creating work arounds I’m beginning to wonder the legal implications of including graded work in permanent transcripts (a child’s legal permanent record determines things like graduation, employability, college admissions, financial assistance etc). I hope it becomes more reliable and user friendly with time.

Some small fixes make the cake. It is a lot of extra steps to for every post have to add the students to the send and the send instantly. If in a hurry, sometimes those are forgotten and the post won’t go out or people are missed. Though I understand the reason why choosing who sees the message is there, it would be helpful if it could be pre set that all the people in the group receive the message and if we only want a sub group selected, then that is when we adjust the settings. Also, when students receive a notification, they click into the app and have to scroll to find that post. It would be nice if we could click on the group and find all of the posts for that group, not have to search the dashboard.

Switching schools. I use this app for both of my daughters’ schools - one in elementary and 1 in jr high. I really like this app. I wished the school district I worked got used it. It is easy to stay in contact with their teachers and school activities. There is a flaw with it though. When I use PS for my daughter in jr. high, everything loads correctly and is updated with the most recent posts. If I switch to my daughter in elementary, I never can see the most recent post until I restart the app on my phone. But I can switch to the jr. high and never have to restart the app. I always see the most recent post. Why is that? I should be able to switch back and forth.

No support available. My student and their school disappeared from my account. I tried everything on their help database (one suggestion that did not work). There is a page all about contacting support; but the menu to get to them does not exist as pictured on the help screen. They advise contacting by chat, phone, or email; but none of these are listed anywhere on their main site or in the help articles. Therefore there is absolutely no way for me to contact anyone to get issue resolved in any way. I can't get or send messages to the school, which actually makes this app the wall standing in the way of getting timely information out connecting to my kid's school at all. This app has cost me hours of my life, first to set it up and deal with all those issues and now trying to find a way to contact someone. It's not a well run business and there is NO customer service.

Effective but not easy. This is our school district’s first year with ParentSquare and while it is effective at delivering communication, it is not easy to use. In particular, there is no way to archive messages or list something as unread so you can come back to it like you can with an email. Every post remains listed and you must search for what you need (if you can remember who sent it or when). The only way I figured out how to designate something no longer needs my attention is to mark it with “appreciate,” and you can’t even filter on that. It’s not great with attachments or long messages - requiring multiple clicks to open and review. And the notifications are relentless - I get a notification banner on my phone, followed by an email and a text - all for the same post. It’s fine, but I miss just getting emails.

Love being able to communicate so easy. I think every school should use this. It is so easy to be able to click on the app and pull up who I need to message. And right now for the carona virus we have to submit a form daily to say if our child has symptoms or if they have been around anyone with covid and it’s just so easy to get on this app and submit the form because this app keeps track of it. If I need to contact her teacher I can If I need to contact her counselor I can If I need to contact principal I can If I need to contact anyone from that school I can all by a click through the app I love it and it’s so simple and easy.

WOW. ParentSquare has helped me a lot as a student in at Arizona. I have had a difficult time learning from home but my teachers and head of school has done AWESOME keeping me posted on what to do every day or when a student needs help. This app helps so much to me my parents and probably my teachers. This app has everything to keep me posted or when I need help they respond as soon as they can. I am so glad this app exists it helps a lot! Thank you ParentSquare and all my teachers for being awesome and creating this awesome!!! Thank you for reading these 2 paragraphs it was probably hard see you later!!!!

Love it!!!!. Parent square gives me the chance to communicate between teachers and other parents about everything that happens in class. I absolutely love the fact that the communication is there. It is absolutely everything. Miss Taylor always communicates everything and it is the best thing ever. I know my son has the best shot in education, not only with his teacher, but with the entire staff at Matthews elementary. I am aware of absolutely everything that goes on whether it's in school or outside of school and it is amazing. I have no doubt in the professional care of my son education, as well as other students in his class. We are very lucky!!!

Teacher side is inefficient. Mac specific: the messaging app will delete what you are typing when you hit the space bar it takes too long to message a specific child’s parent. On my end, it doesn’t make sense for me to click “message” —> “private message”then the next screen just be a comprehensive list of all the students contacts listed alphabetically. Even you have as little as 10 kids in a class, that is a list of 20 - 40 people. It’s also a problem because it assumes you know a child first and last name starting the first day of school, since the students are organized by last name. It also takes too long because you can’t search a name within in a class or grade. So if I need to contact “John’s” parents, I have to type “John” into the search bar and all the “Johns” in the whole school pop up. This isn’t much of an issue if I’m a lower elementary teacher with one class. But if I’m upper elementary + and teaching multiple classes (even across multiple grade) this search bar is not good. Then once you find the parent you’re looking for, it takes to long to send the message from just navigating the app. Often times we do not have more than 3 minutes to find a student’s contacts then craft a message (and those three minutes will be interrupted) so everything needs to be faster / less clicks / less scanning and reading. More filters for the search bar. And let me type freely with out deleting the message. Overall, needs to be more efficient. Think of teaching as a sport. Everything is in constant motion so tech needs to be as efficient as possible.

User friendly/ improves communication. I am a teacher and Parent Square is a great way to communicate with parents, schedule meetings, and provide resources to parents. I am way more organized thanks to parent square. I love that I can see which parents have read my newsletter, and that I can have parents RSVP to evening meetings and gatherings. I upload photographs of my students work to share with the parents weekly and it helps everyone to stay connected. During distance learning I have used the Resource Hub to provide parents with helpful articles, recordings of me singing and telling stories and I have uploaded important documents that parents need to fill out.

Doesn’t honor settings very confusing if you have kids across multiple schools.. It doesn’t seem to matter how I adjust settings I get duplicate notifications both via text and push when I click on them it often fails to load. I think they really haven’t thought through how the app needs to work with families who have kids in multiple schools. Notifications seem to not work right if I was last in a different school than the notification. I was in. There isn’t an easy view where I can see all recent notifications for my kids across schools which is a huge miss and makes it really hard to make sure you didn’t miss anything. My wife gets some notifications I don’t and vice versa it just isn’t set up well for families. Unfortunately our district was sold a program that would make communication better and it largely has made it more confusing but they are likely locked into a contract now. I really wish there were software companies who had customer obsession as a core value in the educational software space and really built good products. Sitting in community council meetings it doesn’t sound like teachers or facility like it much better either so all around fail.

Was fantastic, but suddenly stopped getting notifications and previous ones were deleted. I love(d) ParentSquare, and I rely heavily on it for school news and events, emergency notifications, district news, PTO communications, etc. Last week, I suddenly stopped getting notifications, all my past notifications are gone, and the last post I can see is from 8 months ago. The messages appear unaffected. I have all of the notification settings set to “instant” online and on the mobile app. When I run the notification diagnostics for the mobile app, all systems are green, and I get a little pop-up that says this is a test notification. But, when I go to notifications or texts, the test notification is not there. I have searched the help topics and cannot find anything to address this. I have deleted and reinstalled the app. I have turned my phone off and on. I have even checked that my son’s school registration is still active. There is no way that I have found to contact anyone for this, and this presents a MAJOR problem, as the school communicates primarily via ParentSquare.

Dislike. The notifications for absences will seemingly NEVER GO AWAY! You can click on absences, refresh, exit out of the app, reload, the notification is still there. No matter what way you do it, it goes away on its own when it feels like it. Also with having more than one student in school, this app demands your time and it’s not very good for working parents who use the phone for emergencies only! Between my two children I probably get 5-20 notifications a day from this app. I wish they would send EVERYTHING at the end of the day or week. It’s getting to a point where I’m going to tell the school I want rid of this tether app!

All the info a parents needs today!. I have learned to depend on ParentSquare as much as I do on my secretary. Even more I'd say. Every announcement including late class attendance and absentee alerts are always made as they occur. School events, or upcoming tests or classes are always a click away. And even though I might not have time to get that email/text as it comes in, I always get it no matter when I elect to click and read it. These days all parents need PatentSquare! I can't say enough about having access to it. I'll miss not having it when my son graduates in June, and college begins. Good grief...!

Very easy to use!. I use this as a teacher. Prior to switching over to PS I have used Remind and Class Dojo. I liked both applications for what each brought to the table. Although I did favor Remind a bit more for its usability. At one point my district tried to get us to use Sangha and I refused. It was a terrible and unfriendly program. This year they introduced PS and I have officially closed my Remind account and moved over to PS. Whether I’m using the app or on my laptop it has the best of all messaging apps. My word count is larger, I can post videos, pictures, links, etc. I can schedule messages. Sending private group messages are much easier than on Remind. I like the “forms/permission” option. My parents said it was super easy to sign a permission slip. And best of all? I don’t have to hope that all my parents will join the app. It’s connected to our student rosters so I know that almost every parent will receive my messages.

Great Website; subpar App Functionality. As a teacher who prefers to use my personal Macbook to my school issued windows device, I was estatic at being able to download a ParentSquare App. The functionality is great on my phone for sending out quick messages and posts, but the app has a couple bugs. These include an inability to dismiss a notifications icon from the widget if the message/alert has been view already on a web browser, I must open the app to dismiss the notifications from within. Further, the app does not support some of the same functions that I depend on within the browser version. This includes navigation to groups (extracuriculars) and the like. I hopeful for UI/UX improvements in future updates. :)

Great, But-. Our district moved to ParentSquare from REMIND this year. While the UI is better, I enjoy the calendar integration, and organization is better as it shows like a timeline… I severely miss the ability to start a conversation with a teacher like I had in REMIND. I literally cannot contact anyone unless I email or call the school if they haven’t made a post for me to send a private comment on- which that feature, the private comments- I also appreciate so other parents are just randomly sending me messages. I just wish I could select a staff member and message them. The secretary told me to “select her” and send information about my daughter’s absence and there’s no option for that so I just had to email it in. I never got the absence notice the district coordinator described to respond to with the excuse note either.

School events. Perfect for keeping up with school events and communicating with teachers and staff without having personal information. Only critique would be that there isn’t a way for a parent to message a specific teacher or staff member unless they message the parent first and the parent replies to the message. The staff and teachers I found did not even know this and thought us parents were just not communicating. I wish this would be included in an update soon. Like a listing of staff and teachers to choose from that are linked to your child’s school would make this app perfect.

Super Glitchy, Very low quality. This app is super buggy and has been for years. Some of the nuisances include: - When you read a notification it does not go away. You must view, close and open the app multiple times to dismiss notifications. - If a child has more than one parent, and the other parent enters a note (such as a sick note for an absence) the other parent is prompted to enter a note (even though you cannot enter a second note) and clicking on “view note” simply says “another user submitted a note” with no ability to view what was submitted nor dismiss the notification. Must repeatedly view, open and close the app to reset - the app has to be deleted and reinstalled multiple times a week to dismiss notifications (note I am running most recent version of ios on the newest handset available and these are purely bugs in the app that the developers continue to ignore)

Parent Square. I absolutely love ParentSquare it has been so informative. The teachers and staff are so prompt with helping me with EVERYTHING. I am a single mom of twins. Everyone wants their babies to be at a great school, one that you as a parent feel confident about. I rate Virtus as a 5 star school, I have watched both of my girls become little ladies. They love their teachers and that truly makes my heart happy. Anytime I need to reach out to either of the girls teacher, they are very prompt and make me feel that I know I made the right decision for my family by choosing Virtus. Thank you Virtus for giving me the courage to place my angels in your care everyday. I appreciate everyone of you!!

Best App to receive or to communicate with school staff. I honestly like this platform better than whatever system we use before to communicate. It's real-time messaging and you get the alerts in real-time. One particular thing I like the feature that you can message them individually! It's so user-friendly. I love using this than getting an actual email where I'm not able to interact with other parents, give my opinion, appreciate the message or simply get informed of what's going on in the school. I would love to have a feature where parents can post important news that can be reviewed before being posted to the masses. That right there will be fascinating!!!

I don’t like it.. I feel as if the platform is unnecessarily complex at least the way my district manages it. I use it as a parent, a teacher in one district and as a coach is different district. As a parent I HATE it. The district my son is in waaaaaaaaay overuses it and this tends to shut me down in terms of paying attention to it. The vast majority of what is communicated is just not necessary and very repetitive and in my estimation is not worth the cost. As a high school teacher, I think it’s ok. I don’t send a lot. At times it is useful as a reminder for little things but on the whole it is used to announce things over and over again and as such I think it becomes annoying and people shut it out. As a coach I hate the inflexibility. Home school kids and open enrollment kids make it so that I have to send all messages to all the parents which irritates some of them for reasons above and makes me send less information than I would to the team about changes in practice plans, times, parking restrictions, etc. The athletes don’t like it either and they are hesitant to use it even though they are forced to use it. Overall it reminds me of the cone of silence on Get Smart. It’s overly complicated and I think makes communication worse and not better.

Simply amazing!. I don’t know when our district purchased the ability to utilize ParentSquare, but I will say this. I have utilized it now for over the past four years, first, with my stepdaughter in high school, and now with my youngest in kindergarten. I am able to constantly be in contact with teachers, the notifications, and frequency with which are extremely helpful as is the ability to customize the notifications frequency that I receive on my iPhone. I love the fact that the district or the school each child is in itself is able to put up forms to fill out for parents, polls, and other means of communication which need to be received by the school if not the district in a timely manner. This in conjunction with the SchoolTool platform works exceptionally well.

Perfect Tool. PS is a great communication tool for both parents and educators! This app has been essential during the covid crises and I have utilized the hubs to post resources and lessons, the private messaging to send links for mtgs, as well as the usual posts for weekly parent notes. I also respond to my boys’ teachers trough the app. It is user friendly even for those who are not technologically savvy. PS has really made navigating this challenging time a lot easier. So thrilled that I will have an efficient way to communicate with parents bit virtually and upon our return to in person learning.

No support. My children are in a school that uses this app. I was not able to create an account using the email I have on file with the school. I sent a message to Parent Square support via their website and received no response. No one at the school has any idea how to solve this issue and no one at the company responds to customer service requests. Without support it cannot be seen as a reliable way of staying in touch with the school. Update, April 2021: more of the same. Still no support, still unable to set up account, and still completely reliant on text messages from other parents to know what the school is sending via parent square. This app provides absolutely no advantage over email. It simply adds yet another layer of confusion. ***update 5/21: my older child is about to finish 5th grade, so that’s seven years of no support from this garbage company. No one at the school will take administrative responsibility. This is nonsense. This app does not provide any benefit whatsoever over email.

Not User Friendly.. I find this site very confusing and difficult to navigate. Sometimes it will take me right to the message, and other times I have to search and log out and back in to find it. It functions differently on my phone than on my desk top and it is awkard. When there is a late bus notice, I get the email in my inbox. I also get a notification on parent square which requires me to log in, click on the email (that I've already received and read) and then delete it. Lots of extra steps. Same with the weekly update. It comes in my inbox but then I have to click on the email on Parent Sqare to remove it. There have been serveral communication platforms over the years and Parentsquare has been, for me, the most unsatisfactory one.

UPDATE: Recent updates keep forcing password resets. Update 13 Sept: The team helped me figure this out. My husband and I have a shared account but are logging in with different emails. We share the same password due to this, so when one reset the password the other one lost access. Updated my review from 1 to 4. Original review: Since the last update (mid August 2024) the app won’t remember my password or accept my Face ID. I’ve reset my password 3 times in the past 2 days to be able to continue to have access to the messages coming from my school district. This app is regularly a great app, not sure why it’s behaving like this for me and my husband. It’s quite annoying to have to deal with.

Compared to Seesaw. Last year my daughter was introduced to Seesaw as a kindergarten and the app was unstable/interactive but confusing to navigate as a parent; which was concerning, not to say that she didn’t learn how to use the tools included like a reading app full of virtual books. ParentSquare is nice because it seems to be set up for parents and users to get the most updated information to respond accordingly. ie something that the parents can “ play “ around with without the distraction of children styled apps. There looks like a feature to possibly interact with your child but the issues I run into are that the PS doesn’t load. I hope these can be easily debugged as relaying on email alone or visiting other platforms like Facebook to stay current with the school via pta meetings or listening in on school board meetings is important to me as a mother of a child enrolled and another on the way.

Amazing tool for my school!. I have tried several parent/teacher communication tools in my elementary and ParentSquare is by far the best. Having one common place for parents to receive notifications, reminders and the happenings of their child’s classroom has been priceless. It is a tremendous help for parents to see what things are happening in their child’s class and it creates a climate of transparency and trust for my entire school. My entire school is signed up and every teacher uses it several times a week. I also love how it integrates and syncs with my SIS / PowerSchool. It makes getting started and signing up parents very easy. I’ve also been trying out the forms and permission form for things like field trip permission and we love it. Probably the best part of being with ParentSquare so far has been the amazing customer service. Everyone has been so nice and helpful.

Just what I needed. Parent Square has truly been a blessing to me. Since my child has been home schooling it’s been a challenge for her and myself. Moving forward I saw God preparing us for our upgrade in this modern technology. My child learned quickly but for myself I started catching on and with this app I felt I could communicate more socially to other parents about all the different things relating to our children education and the experiences we learned so far that we could encourage one another through us being able to communicate as parents how we can better help our children get through this pandemic as well as build strength to get us through this as well. This is why I wanted to be apart of Parent Square!💙💪🏼🥰

Relationship building!. Honestly as a technically challenged parent this app scared me. After exploring the easy to use app, and using the readily useful communication tools my comfort level eased quite a bit. The videos seemed slow and do get stuck making viewing a lesson difficult, but none the less I’m still impressed. Actually I was struggling a bit with my son on the subject of learning in school. Despite the COVID-19 crisis I feel like I’m developing a much closer relationship with my son as far as discussing what he’s actually learned and where he needs help. I also feel much closer to his teacher giving me the satisfaction of actively being apart of the education being presented to my child. This has been a very positive experience for not just my son, but the entire family! My two year old can now participate in educational activities with his brother instead of racing out to the curb every morning to wait for the big yellow Twinkie that he doesn’t get to ride.

Buggy, can’t correct phone number. Imports wrong number from school system and can’t be corrected in app. If you call parent square help ( the number is hard to find, they don’t want you to call ) they insisted the school district had the wrong number, and wouldn’t listen that the school has all my numbers correct and parent square is only adding my work number not my primary number. School IT also couldn’t fix. Just fyi its buggy and won’t work for everyone To the response: i have emphasized the school info is correct and they confirmed that, there is nothing on the schools end that needs to be changed, Parent square is importing my WORK number not my PRIMARY number, this is a parent square bug, not a problem with the schools information and the fact that neither parent square or the school can fix it after numerous calls/emails to both is astonishing.

Excellent Communication Tool for Schools and Teachers. ParentSquare has been an amazing platform for staying connected with my child’s school and teacher. The interface is user-friendly, making it easy to receive updates, announcements, and reminders in real time. I especially love how it centralizes all communication—whether it’s messages from the teacher, school newsletters, or event invitations, everything is in one place. It’s also great that I can send messages directly to my child’s teacher and get timely responses. This has made coordinating things like conferences or addressing any concerns so much smoother. The ability to include attachments and photos has been particularly helpful for keeping track of assignments and events. ParentSquare truly strengthens the connection between parents and schools, creating a better experience for everyone involved. Highly recommend!

Did you know that you can earn 25 USD from our site just by registering? Get $25 for free by joining Payoneer!

Imagine you at your best. All the time. Picture yourself at your sharpest and most productive. Your most alert and focused. Your most lucid, creative and confident. At work. At play. In every area of your life. Add Mind Lab Pro® v4.0 to your daily routine and uncap your true potential. Buy Now!

Adsterra is the most preferred ad network for those looking for an alternative to AdSense. Adsterra is the ideal choice for new sites with low daily traffic. In order to advertise on the site in Adsterra, like other ad networks, a certain traffic limit, domain age, etc. is required. There are no strict rules. Sign up!

Excellent method of communication. This app has been a very effective tool for keeping in touch with our children's teachers, specific classes, and entire school. I especially appreciate the ability to message an individual or small group of people, instead of the entire consortium of parents and school staff. The volunteer reminders are fantastic and really help keep us on track as to what the needs are of each grade, as well as how we can be most helpful -- without promptly forgetting. I wish all schools used this app!

Needs improvement. I like how easy it makes it to keep in touch with the teachers and what my kids are up to. I dislike the fact that I can’t clear the alerts or how, because I changed my number, the app won’t let me look at certain documents because part of it is linked to my old number without the option to change it. I updated my number everywhere in the app I could - and with the schools so all the information matched - and still can’t access certain documents.

Sign ups. The sign up section needs a lot of work. Why would I need to see all the filled sign ups that other parents have filled? Why do I need to scroll down and search for a Star in order to see my own time slot? It’s not convenient or quick whatsoever. Also, when I got my new iPhone the app kept crashed every time I typed a word in new message. I can definitely see the need and purpose for this type of app. I think it has a lot of potential still, just not exactly where it should be while already supporting the demands and responsibilities of actual parent communication.

INFO A COMMUNICATION D-. Great information on events and happenings. TEACHERS DON’T RESOND! So far, only 2 teachers ever respond to questions regarding my child, I’ve asked two. One was regarding my concern about my nephews change in energy and enthusiasm. This being his first year I wanted to see if his teachers witnessed any issues. One answer out of 7. After communicating with one teacher through my nephews account, she said she only communicates through google classroom, but doesn’t give parents access to communicate because she would get too many emails. It was appreciated and comforting to know that at least two teachers care about their students.

Inclusion…. Overall I like the app and it definitely helps with communication. My issue with inclusion pertains to the app only being able to designate one parent as “primary”. The result is more work on the part of the non-primary parent as this person is not able to access important data and documents without the help from the primary parent. For our school (is it the app too?), the default primary parent is the mom. In our household we share responsibilities 50-50. Would be great for ParentSquare to offer the same…

It’s okay…. I like this app but I can’t say it’s blown me away. I don’t enjoy the constant notifications on my Apple Watch and phone. We were on vacation and our app kept going off. It would be nice if we could mute it for a period of time. I also prefer to just email my teacher vs using the app. To me having this app, doesn’t make my life easier, I don’t mind picking up the phone or emailing the teachers. It’s just another thing to have and have it go off on my watch/phone.

Parent Square. Love this tool. My daughters grades have went up because I can communicate with her teachers and tell them about her frustrations on things she doesn’t understand (doesn’t get it. I can’t do it) I relay to teacher and they work with her to help her understand. My daughters comes home HAPPY she had a good day. No more crying No more stress for her. We are all happy 😊. I would like to be able to message the Principal to parse the teachers.

The worst of all the school apps. This app is the worst of all the school communication apps I have used as a parent of 4 school age children who have attended over 10 schools in 6 different districts. It is very disorganized and difficult to use with multiple children in multiple schools. The notifications are useless because they do not show where the message/announcement is and often crashes the entire app. Since messages and announcements are clustered by school it is a nightmare trying to figure out which things are pertinent to which child. For older children with multiple teachers the headache is compounded. I would give this clunky nightmare zero stars if I could.

Could be better. I like the idea of having communication in one spot but it is not the easiest to use. Way too many icons to click in and out of just to find information for your child/children. For a while I keep getting the message that Parent Square was having a hard time connecting to the server. It took about 10 minutes and it’s finally connected for how long not sure. Also it wasn’t known that this was an app. A lot of parents got emails (I’m one) but nothing else until we started asking on Facebook. That’s when parents said that there is apparently an app. Not very good communication from the schools.

Good app. I’m really liking this app for our schools but my hold out of one star is the fact that when you have children at different schools there is no central place to view everything nor can you always tell when receiving notifications from the teacher which school the messages apply to. It’s cumbersome to have to keep switching back and forth between schools trying to find the message or post I’m looking for. Other than that it really has a lot of potential!

No main school news feed. We have 3 kids in the school district in 3 schools. It’s hard to navigate this app to find info. I’ll see a notification come up, click on it and not find the post. There’s a separate screen for each school, child, teacher, the district, etc. and then multiple for each with posts and media. It’s fine that there are categories but it would be helpful to be able to see everything in one place so I can find the info at a glance sequentially. Maybe there’s a training video but I couldn’t find a link to that in the app either. Arg.

Love this app but need help please. I absolutely love this app and am so thankful our school uses it as our communication tool. I continue however, to have an issue that I have emailed your company requesting help but have never received a reply. All works well with app if I am just viewing. If I respond to a post with a comment, my comment is posted BUT the app goes into a tizzy....blinking, blinking, blinking. I am unable to get it to stop; cannot use back button either. The only way to get it to stop is to completely close the app (“x” out does not work). I have tried deleting app and reinstalling but this bug continues. I am using an iPad. Hope this is something you are working on fixing because you app is an incredible communication for schools (I am in school Administration....) Thank you for addressing this issue.

Useful but not user friendly. I like having everything online and accessible but there should be different tabs or folders or something to organize information better. Have one long stream of info makes it hard to sift through what I consider to be school-related spam and find the info we actually need. School announcements, PTA notes, Teacher notes, etc. I feel like this should be a relatively simple upgrade; like gmail folders but the poster can select what folder to post in. It would be far more useful this way.

Great app. Parent square has been a great form of communication that I have ever came across, I have used others in the past and I have to say this one is the one that has been the best to navigate. This is a great way for us parents to stay informed and up to date with what’s going on at school. It has also been a great form of communication with the teachers. I hope they never get rid of this app.

More frustrating than helpful which ….. …. Unfortunate. It seems like it would be a great app. No contact for the staff (at least at my child’s school) is odd. I can’t email or call because the information is nonexistent. I sadly couldn’t find much useful information in here. The holy grail was when I was going through the menu clicking everything in hopes to find something that made me keep the app. There was under “groups”,for some reason the desktop version (I believe Aries page has something to do with it?? ). Strange but it was soooooo much easier to navigate than the app. Which is a bummer. Hopefully it gets movin’ because it would be crazy helpful !

Mass notice. Not sure if you have this feature. I’m new to Parent Square but I would like to be able to send a mass notice to my parents or an individual notice to my parent without it being seen by the entire school. It would be like a private class bulletin. I do enjoy Parent Square and I like it better than dojo because it is connected. I like being able to communicate with all staff by picture or word.

Teacher/Parent communication. This app is great for communicating with parents and teachers. The problems I’m having, attachments open however most are to blurry to read. You have to sign in to google docs to view. I personally do not like having to sign in to different apps to view something. The videos are slow, you can hardly see them or hear them on IPhone. This app in my opinion is great for communicating. It would be awesome if it handled all things needed for parents to see grades, attachments, classes, videos. If I have to keep signing in and out of 2-3 different apps to find information. It’s not worth the time!!

Good Tool. Although I prefer being able to communicate directly with my families via email as I can tailor groups a little easier this way, I like PS for creating informative posts almost like a class news letter. If someone was not managing this platform to assist setup, new group formation etc. I would be frustrated and feel that it probably wouldn’t be worth the extra effort. The best tool has been the forms/signups. We have been using one form daily this year for COVID purposes, which would have been really time consuming any other way.

Finally communication that is easy. I have seen complain ts from teachers about this app. But as a parent I say finally!!! This app has been a huge Improvement on our schools otherwise lack luster performance in communication with families. Hearing people complain about having to communicate with their customers is really annoying and won't get any sympathy from me. Welcome to the real world. Thumbs way up from me. I just hope that it only gets better as time goes on

I’m a parent and I hate this app!. I dislike this app. I do not like the design at all! It is difficult to navigate from school to school when you have multiple students(my opinion!!) This was a bad decision for our district to switch to this system. Alerts will not clear even after you have viewed them. I don’t see the point of this app if I still have to go to my email to read what is being sent. Too many alerts. I blame the school district but Dojo worked just fine for me. I a get text, email and parent square notification at least 5x a day!! I find it difficult to find my child’s teachers to message them. Dojo atleast provided you with a photo of the teacher and all your child’s teachers in one easy list.

Great School. Im so happy , and thankful to had my child in this school !! It was the best experience ever. They help him so much and he graduated with the best grades and a scholarship from this school ! I will recomend this school 100 % to all the kids .. We got the best help , the best Conseling on what to do and the best teachers always helping to my son .. Choices charter is the best way to e continue your schol and make your goal! And ParentSquare it was wonderful to be on track of grades and everything on my sons grades

Great Communication Tool. I love this app because it keeps me informed about what my child is doing in class. It’s wonderful to be able to communicate directly with the teachers, especially when there are questions about homework, class work, or any other concerns. I had to learn to navigate the app, which took little while, but now that I know my way around, it’s awesome!

Improvements to be made. I like the one platform idea for communication by the school system. However I have children in different schools middle and elementary, I wish alerts and the number of them would come up and stay up on the app by the schools that sent out the messages until I cleared them. I find myself daily having to flip back and forth between schools to make sure I got all the announcements. Then scrolling down to the last couple of messages I am familiar with to make sure I have not missed anything.

So Convoluted. I have to use this app for both teaching and for my kids’s schools. I hate it. So do all of the teachers I work with. If parents thought all of the posts on ClassDojo were bad, they are most certainly ignoring all of the posts that come through on this app! There are so many on a regular basis, that they’re simply not reading them! That certainly doesn’t solve the problem! This app is not user-friendly, and it’s annoying. The alert for absences from the high school never go away, so you’re constantly thinking that you have new messages. The only useful tool is the RSVP sign-up tool—which was great for Parent-Teacher Conferences, and sign-ups for events. Aside from that, I could absolutely live without this app.

Multiple schools for children. I have children in different schools and this has been a 1 stop shop of info for both schools! It’s really easy to use and I can select which school and posts I want to view at any given time. I do however, find there is a delay of when something is posted in the actual app and when I get the email alert about the update, this is why I rate it only a 4star rating. Other than that it’s a great tool for parent/teacher communication.

Does not work with multiple students in multiple schools. One of my sons is autistic and attends another elementary school than my other son who is not. When I contacted my autistic son’s school to inform them that I was not receiving messages from the school, they informed me that ParentSquare does not work if your kids are in two different schools. They recommended I use another email and set up a second account. I believe that this is a fatal flaw in the program and an easy fix. Until that is changed I can not give a good review. I realize that it’s not the intention but it amounts to discrimination against families with children with disabilities.

Amazing. My name is Ebony and I’m from NYC. During this very hard time of quarantining due to the corona virus hitting the nation. My daughters school Legacy College Prep in the Bronx has partnered with your company/app to allow us to learn remotely. And I have to say that I love it. It’s use friendly and easy to comprehend and maneuver around the website/app. Communicating with classmates, teachers is great. Keep up the good work. For parents like me it’s comforting to know that this app makes it easy to talk, send attachments, pictures etc and needed.

Very Helpful. I love being able to connect with the teachers and keep up with whatever they have going on in their classes. If I have any questions or concerns all I have to do is send the teacher(s) a message and we’ll have our own private message thread. Also, the teachers are able to send out messages to all the parents keeping us informed and up to date with what’s happening. It’s very helpful! :)

I’m in a better place. I really like this app.. like all things it can be a bit confusing, but like all things we have to navigate. I am a busy parent like many of you are and my child is busy between school and sports unfortunately there is not much time to chat afterwards. All we are thinking of is showering and eating dinner. This helps me stay in touch with all that goes on in my students time away from me. Grades, tardies, missed, sports, communication with teachers . Yes I give 👍👍

It just doesn’t work that well. Still way too buggy. The error when you start it up still happens over half the time. When you click on a notification, it needs to go to the post, not just to the general page. It does not. That last problem is magnified by the following problems: (1) the newsfeed has plenty of posts from two weeks ago but not most of today’s posts (even in groups I’m subscribed to); (2) searching by message content is almost completely ineffective. At least, if you know who sent it, name search works; (3) the fact that notifications don’t tell you clearly if it’s a post or a message or a comment, making it even harder to find. If it’s a comment; you will never find it except by guess and check. The fact that the app continues to have fewer features than the website is also really not ideal, although the website equally makes it impossible to find recent posts that are buried under weeks old ones because search doesn’t really work there, either.

Too many glitches. I now have to use this App for both my kids in school (2 different schools). I prefer class dojo for my youngest. I have received numerous messages that my Sophomore son has been absent at school, when he has been there! I like to go back and show him, but then it’s gone! Just like the warning video about the test siren coming on October 4th! Why can’t I see that anymore?!!? This App tells me nothing about how my kids are doing in school, and I can only message their teachers?! Fix the glitches! And tell me more about my sons progress rather than his bogus absentees! I no longer get notifications that my youngest has earned points for good behavior either. Not a big fan.

Just what we needed!. FIVE BIG STARS! ParentSquare is exactly what I needed to be connected to my kids’ school, and all of their teachers. Every single communication, announcement, reminder, school board meeting, events, practice/games, and even pics can be shared and viewed instantly and simply. I am very impressed with the way the app is organized because it allows for lots of info and updates without becoming cluttered. I have only good things to say!

Decent app just dependent on too much by district. I have just started using this app for our school district this year. I like the apps functionality and options. It is easy to navigate and print from for handouts from the teacher’s or school. I do wish that the school district would not depend on it for all communications with parents as some parents are not technically advanced and this may cause them to miss functions, assignments or general news of School activities.

Excellent. I am really enjoying using this app. I have very few complaints. The only one really worth mentioning is what I receive an email notification I must go through the app to check it. If I try to go through the email which then takes me through the browser, it’s really slow and unresponsive on the phone. This is only a phone issue. On the computer it’s fine. I love how versatile it is. I only wish more parents would get on board.

App is slow. The app takes a while to load when starting. When watching videos or viewing multiple pieces of content, the download time is painful even if you’re on excellent WiFi and that is if it doesn’t crash on you. Streaming videos shouldn’t be difficult in this day and age but this app feels extremely outdated. There should also be better notification settings. Most in my community just turn off their notifications because they feel too bombarded but the options don’t allow for batch notifications. This then leads to most folks missing timely information in the app.

Efficient Communication Tool. I like this app as it makes it very easy to stay updated about the latest school announcements. The push notifications make it easy to follow important announcements and the app is structured in a simple but efficient manner. This app is the easiest way to keep up with the latest school announcements without to need to look at text messages or emails.

Another toll in the box. Great for relation building with students and teachers. I find this app very useful and an additional tool too help communicate and resolve certain issues without needing a parent teacher conference. Only issue I have is when I’m signed in to my account and send a message, it has my wife’s name as the sender. Our accounts are linked so there may be a bug there somewhere. Other than that I loved it.

Good, but you can’t rotate the phone while viewing PDFs + No way to submit bug reports :). ParentSquare works well for me. There is one small issue I’d love to report somewhere in their help system, but I can’t find a way to report a bug. No one has been able to successfully replace PDFs yet, so I still get them fairly regularly from our school. They are usually unreadably small on my phone in the upright “portrait” orientation. But by turning my phone on the side, I can usually read them. The trouble is that ParentSquare is locked into the upright orientation. All they need to do to fix this is remove the orientation lock when viewing attachments. There is a workaround: 1. “Share” the attachment 2. “print” 3. Pinch outward on the preview like you are zooming in: the preview will become full-screen and you can rotate the phone from this view.

Fix the Notification Preferences Please!!. I love the Parent Square app, but yesterday’s preferences somehow changed to receiving emails, texts, and app notifications. I do not want the texts. Every time that I turn off text notifications, it won’t save it! As soon as I close the app and go back in, it shows text notifications as instant again. I had to mute the text conversation on my phone and I am about to block the phone number because apparently that’s the only way to make it stop. I just want to receive notifications via the app. I do not want text notifications! Please fix this!

Uhm.... So our local Catholic school uses this app Parent Square to notify parents of school notices and homework. They use another app Remind for notifications and a third app Power School to post grades. Well they had a methane gas leak at school and the Fire Dept got called out. Between these 3 apps I failed to get the emergency notification to come pick up my kid. If the developers are reading this can you make sure you test your in app notifications? The app really needs to step up its game to help in an emergency, and ideally encompass enough features so that parents don’t have to juggle 3 apps just to see how our kiddo is doing at school.

Parent Square App. I downloaded parent square perhaps the first year the developers created it? Unfortunately I lost my iPhone in 2018 and had to re install the app again on my iPhone IOS 11. I’ve only logged onto the complete full version site perhaps 1-2 times? The app is wonderful in that it allows access to student information from different locations . Information such as attendance, teacher contact, classes, AP exams etc. Check daily student health screening etc.

Message Feature Keeps Disappearing!. As a teacher, I absolutely love this app and the ability to post announcements and message parents, but I’m puzzled as to why the “message” feature keeps disappearing on my iPhone app. I constantly have to delete the app and re-download it so the message feature appears at the bottom. But it seems that as soon as it appears it then disappears. Refreshing on the app doesn’t bring the messages back. My iPhone system is up to date, so not sure why this keeps happening. Its frustrating.

Communication made easy. Love this app. Everyone is much busier these days with the pandemic trying to keep life afloat. This form of communication with our teacher, scoop and district makes it easy to stay in the loop. When we have questions on assignments, school happenings or bus schedules this is the turn to app. I especially like the communication between the teacher and the parents. The assignments for the week are very clear and we also get a friendly reminder of where our child is at with assignments.

Great App. I really like how this app allows us to be kept updated with everyday things/events from school; with out having to go on the school’s website or social media. My favorite part of this app definitely has to be the communication aspect of it. I feel like it makes things so much easier with messaging the teachers and getting a response back! Mostly since my kids go to different schools and they are all in one application!

Volunteer Sign-Ups and Calendar Sync. Please allow the volunteer signups to sync with your calendar if you subscribe to it. Our school relies on parent volunteers to run smoothly and to keep tuition costs reasonable. So many volunteers are not showing up because they always reference their calendars and not their email. And I often see administrators rushing to fill those gaps constantly when they are already inundated with other tasks. It’s an extra step to manually input into your phone calendar that many busy parents don’t seem to have the time for. PLEASE make this feature available!

Why is there hidden notification?. I have three supposed messages/notifications from this app. Are they visible in the app? No. Do you know where to go once you open the app to find the messages? No. There is no way of finding these so called notifications in order to make the bubble disappear. There needs to be a way to go directly to the messages or notifications when the app says there are some. Please let me know how to fix this. As far as the communication with the schools, the app works great.

Great connection!. I’ve been using this app for just over a year, and I have had a great time using it to stay on top of events going on at school. My son always tells me when a notification dings and he knows what it’s for. Using parent square keeps me updated with everything, as the interface and platform are easy to use and navigate.

Terrible. This app is the worst. As a parent, I sometimes don’t get messages and often times it won’t let me scroll to the bottom of the message. It just shows the top half and stops scrolling. As a teacher, I find it frustrating that I can set office hours but still get texts at all hours of the day. Yes. Parents text their teachers at 1am. I would like for the office hours to push a message and tell the parents that this is outside of office hours and your teacher won’t be responding. And then not release the message to me until at least 6am. There should be more options. I’d also like to be able to send videos. This app is highly unreliable.

Embraced during quarantine. My school already has this in place, but embraced it for larger usage during the Coronavirus school closing. 4 weeks in and still going strong. Notifications are useful, multiple kids school posts are in one combined feed, secure messaging with teachers and sign ups for video conferences are very handy. The website is still better if you have a laptop or iPad Pro, but for the phone this is the way to go over the website.

Authentication nightmare. The Austin ISD (AISD) forces us to use this app. It is terrible. Every year I am unable to authenticate and the app provides no helpful instructions or path to resolution. None of my kids teachers have any idea how to fix it. Each year I finally manage to find someone at the school who knows how to fix the issue, and then, as a reward, I get 10,000 unimportant messages per day. There is no way to filter or sort messages by importance, so it’s like email only worse. If I could go back in time and prevent Steve Jobs from allowing this app into the App Store, I would use that power. And also I’d buy Apple stock, obviously.