In the weeks leading up to the Wednesday, July 10 start to the 2024-25 school year at Chandler Unified School District campuses, a few programs and other ways parents can stay plugged into …
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education
Back to school: Apps and other tech Chandler Schools parents should have
Metro Creative
“Here Comes the Bus” is one of the newly introduced mobile and computer apps the Chandler Unified School District is urging parents to use when the school year starts Wednesday, July 10.
In the weeks leading up to the Wednesday, July 10 start to the 2024-25 school year at Chandler Unified School District campuses, a few programs and other ways parents can stay plugged into what’s going on in the district have been highlighted by administration.
One of the newer tech elements offered to parents is a mobile device application called ParentSquare.
Superintendent Frank Narducci has extolled ParentSquare as a “one-stop shop” for school-to-parent communication.
The webpage cusd80.com/parentsquare says ParentSquare is a downloadable app that is a “safe and secure platform to host all school-to-home communication in one place.”
The page states the app includes direct two-way messaging, private conversations, news posts, district-wide urgent alerts and notifications and a user interface through a website or an app.
The app can be translated into several languages as well, with Spanish and Mandarin being common languages spoken by CUSD families.
Parents can sign up, using a phone number or email address on file with CUSD, here.
Another app Narducci has mentioned more than once is called "Here Comes the Bus." The transportation app allows parents to access real-time GPS locations of a particular school bus headed along its route.
Narducci said the app allows parents to keep students at home and either indoors or in outdoor shade until time to leave for an uncovered bus stop on the hottest mornings.
It also allows parents to leave home at very precise times if meeting children being dropped off in a residential area by a bus.
The CUSD deadline to turn in transportation information for first-day-of-school busing was Friday, July 12.
Narducci has also emphasized the importance of getting as many parents as it can, signed up to use the Infinite Campus Parent Portal. That allows students and parents to log in and access grades, class attendance, progress, assignment due dates and other information and other messages from each teacher.
Narducci said, at the June 26 board meeting, fewer than 70% of CUSD parents are signed up for the portal.
Jason W. Brooks is a News editor for the Daily Independent and the Chandler Independent.
He covers the Chandler area for both yourvalley.net and the monthly print edition while writing for and assisting in the production of the Daily Independent.
Brooks is a well-traveled journalist who has documented life in small American communities in nearly all U.S. time zones.
Born in Washington, D.C. and raised there and in suburban Los Angeles, he has covered community news in California, New Mexico, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and northern Arizona.
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