It’s back to school season! Most of our schools have started preparing for the new year.
We know back to school season seems like it is coming much too fast. The summer lull will soon be over and your classroom will be filled with new voices and students. We wanted to share a few pro tips and recommendations to help you start the school year off on the right foot.
1) Update the information on your PikMyKid portal.
Set yourself up for a smooth dismissal by making sure the data adjustments are made for student names, ID numbers, grade levels and teacher assignments before the school start date. If your student, grade level, and classroom data are ready for the new year, make sure your school’s admin team submits it to [email protected].
This way, parents will be able to announce and make changes for their students. Here’s our step by step guide to get you started.
2) Orient your parents on back to school procedures.
Parent engagement is important. Mandate the PikMyKid parent app for the new parents. Make sure to keep the following materials ready for the parent orientation day.
- Print and add the ‘New Parent Registration and User Guide’ in English and Spanish to the welcome kit for new students.
- Parents can always download the PikMyKid parent app from their smartphone play store and the online wizard will help in registration, we also offer step by step instructions for parent registration here.
- Increasing existing parent registrations is equally important. Use these flyers to help explain why your school has chosen to use PikMyKid. These materials can be distributed during orientation to new and existing parents.
- Print the PikMyKid Tags with student’s dismissal number for your classroom from the portal send them home in the parent orientation kit
3) Consider the Dismissal Realities.
Before you dive right into a new school year, take a second to consider the transportation your school’s kids will take home during the first week. Update the pickup modes, based on the most common mode of transportation like some schools may choose all parents should use the only carline on day 1 or walk home. Schools must assign bus routes for their new students.
4) Craft a Release Plan.
Once you know the most common ways kids will be leaving your campus, you can plan accordingly. Will kids be released from their classroom, an auditorium, or distributed to secondary locations such as a bus waiting zone? Map out these routes and keep them organized with your Pikmykid dashboard.
5) Review End of Day Etiquette.
Teachers can manage end of day jitters and chaos by establishing an end of day routine. Students can use the last 5 minutes to clean up their workspace, organize their backpacks, and make sure they have all of their materials ready for when they get home.
6) Also, it is important that you take advantage of our New Features.
Pikmykid is always looking for ways to make your life easier! We are continuously improving the program with feedback from the schools. Our upgrades this year include:
- Sleek Dispatcher with flexible filters and student search
- Advanced Bus dismissal with Bus arrival, departed alerts
- Multiple After-School Program Check-Ins
- Report Absentee along with reasons
- Customer-friendly reports with a flexible column view without downloads
If you don’t see the features you were waiting for, please write to us!
Additionally, new training videos will be added to the training section of your staff portal to help you make the most of our update.
Happy Back to School Season Everyone! We’re looking forward to making it the best one yet. Remember, you can always reach out to our Pikmykid team at [email protected] with any questions you may have.