1-5 scale - How well does your school communicate to you?

[Bang!Zoom!]

Do they meet your expectations, better than you could dream of, or barely tolerable?

 

1 being the worst, 5 being the best ever.in.the.whole world

[Tree Frog]

I find the communication depends on whether or not my kids bring home the requisite information. If they don't, I likely won't know what I'm missing. We almost missed a really cool opportunity for this summer because they didn't bring the stuff home. Generally, though, they give me what I need to sign. The school also uses facebook for the general all school info, but for the grade specific stuff, I rely on the kids. They were in middle school, so they were old enough to remember that kind of stuff. (I look at the problems they have when they forget to give me the information I or the school need as a natural consequence.)

 

If you're wanting just a number, I would say a 3 or 4. The school does a good job sharing the info with the kids.

[SKL]

They could do a lot better.  The whole "science test tomorrow" and not knowing what chapter is coming next etc.  There is only one parent-teacher conference and it's one month into the school year.  Just a lot of things that would be easy to communicate if someone tried to see the needs from a parents' point of view.

 

They do communicate some stuff fairly well most of the time.  I would give them a 2.5 overall, I think.

[Roadrunner]

I would give them a five. I got piles of papers in addition to emails about everything I could have possibly cared about to know.

[MistyMountain]

DD's teacher did a weekly newsletter on what was coming up. The homework assignments for the week were in a big folder that contained all her school work from the week. I had a good idea of what they were working on and how she did on papers but I didn't really hear how dd was doing from the teacher. At drop off you can't really talk to the teacher. I only heard at the two conferenceshow she was doing and her opinions. If I had concerns or wanted to talk about something the teacher was available. She answered emails in a timely manner and would meet after class if I had something I wanted to address. Overall it wasn't bad but I just would like to hear how she is doing in class more often. Hopefully her new teacher will be easy to communicate with. I would say a 3 maybe a 4.

[Laura Corin]

4.  But it depends what you expect.  I don't need lots of stuff from the school.  School reports three times a year, teacher meetings once a year, plus notification if something is going wrong: fine with me.

 

L

[SKL]

I would note that the need for info "from the school / teacher" depends on the age of the child.  Obviously if my kids were older, I would consider it more their responsibility to make sure they were prepared and that they told me what I needed to know.

[Uff Da!]

Ours did is very good about communicating. We get a weekly school e-mail and a weekly classroom e-mail. There are also pamphlets, fliers and other things coming home every week in a folder.

My only concern is, when a student is struggling, how long do they wait to contact parents and let them know? I would rather know ASAP but I'm sure many teachers don't want to worry a parent unnecessarily. This next year, I'll periodically check with DD's teacher to ask if there's anything I need to help her with at home.

[stoverdavid30]

Ours does really well.  We get a recorded phone message via the phone system at least once a week.

[kiwik]

I think the teacher to parent communication is fine. The problem is a systemic one where the national curriculum documents are vague and schools don't use programmes. For example SKLs kids school used Singapore math so she can buy a book and look at what they are doing. In my kid's school children of the same age in different classes seem to be doing completly different levels - my son's homework is single digit addition his friend in the same year level has 3 digit addition. Spelling and reading are more consistent.

[Arcadia]

When my older was in B&M school, the school communication was a 5, kindergarten teacher was a 5 and 1st grade teacher was a 3. For kindergarten, his teacher would reply emails within 24hrs and her weekly newsletter are accurate baring last minute changes decided by the school. For 1st grade, I had to clarify with his teacher as her weekly newsletter did not have all the info required. Her turn around time for emails was slower too. I heard middle school communication is decent and high school communication is negligible.

For their virtual academy, their assigned teachers are a 5 in their weekly newsletters and email turn around time. School communication is pretty good too like communicating changes to curriculum, or new choices offered, science fair information and field trips information.

[mathnerd]

School communication was a 4.5 for K. They sent a weekly "performance report" home - both academic and behavior (and notes about specific incidents when the behavior was not good). They also sent email monthly reports on what the class was going to learn for the upcoming month. They sent reminders when there were projects due. My kid's teacher replied to emails within 2 hours. She also got my son tested for vision because I had a concern before he was eligible to be tested (only done at 1st grade) and then sent me the testing report which confirmed that he had some issues. There was only one parent-teacher meeting in the year. But, she set up a special meeting for us when we had concerns.

And she took the time to talk to each parent during the back to school meetings and the open house event.

But, the problem was that the report cards were too "generic" in the comments sections as if she cut-pasted the wordings from some existing template - for e.g. "He shows great growth"., "He is improving on his social skills" (this kid is the most social and most popular in his class and is the biggest "helper" for the students and teacher), "He had a great trimester" (????). I would have liked individualized comments like - his handwriting improved or his reading level went up or some such thing. So, I am not giving it a 5 star rating.

[Word Nerd]

I'd rate our elementary school a 4 or 5, but the middle/high school would get a 2 at most.

[ScarletJones]

I would give a 5 on the rating scale. There is no performance report weekly, but its just once a month during school meetings and the open house event.

[hm2009]

I would say the school communication  was 4 but communication from teacher was 0. I hate it when the teacher does not reply to your emails and blames it on the school email system not working..uuuhhhgg....but she has not problem receiving/replying emails if I let her know that dd would be absent from school because she is sick...To that I get a quick reply of "Thank you for letting me know, I hope she feels better soon." Ask her anything else and you would not get any reply back.  She also has a way of getting paper mails/notes disappear. I learnt a big lesson this year...if you don't get a reply to the first email, send it again with a cc to the principal. 

 

 

[vonfirmath]

See. up until the end of the school year, I'd have put our communication at at least a 4 and probably a 5. The teacher responded to emails quickly, she sent home periodic updates as to what was being covered in the class. (every 6-9 weeks. No regular schedule to know for sure we should get another one or not) But at the very end of the year, I learned about stuff that never made its way home and I realized there were wide gaps.

 

I had had one "bad feeling" before the end of the year about communication.  They had a program in their class where a book was sent home and needed to be read every day and a new book was put in the bag every week. You initialed the calendar to show it was read. They were dinky 8 page books. Nothing challenging to my kid at all but we did the best we could with them anyway.  Read the book. Put it back in the bag, send back to school and repeat.  One day about 4 weeks out, no book was in the bag. There was a note about books missing and to please look around and see if you can find them.  I knew the book was in the bag everyday when sent back, so I didn't worry about it.  Bag was still empty.  A few days later, we got another note with most of the titles crossed off and a few titles left, and the request to look for them.  I sent back a note saying that 1 of those books DS had never had in his bag and the other books had gone back in the bag.

 

I got a note back a couple of days later (NOT particularly directed to me) that it was $1/book that had gone missing.  So please return the book or the money.  Since I knew we didn't lose any books, I ignored it.  I don't know if it was directed at me or not to this day. We never got another readaloud book in the bag for the rest of the year. But she didn't send a specific "pay for this missing book" either.

 

I know the books were in the bag and the bag was in the backpack everyday when I put DS on the bus to school. It IS possible he managed to lose the book between that point and when they had reading time at school -- but I would have appreciated in that place to find out at the time he lost it and not a list at the end of the year that was somehow now my responsibility.   And I'm not sure if that was what she was saying or not. It left a bad taste.

 

Then I went to the Kindergarten end of year presentation. And there was a table full of Kindergarten projects that were obviously done at home and brought in -- sculptures representing their favorite book.  My son's teacher never sent the project home with them so we didn't have an opportunity to do it.

 

During the presentation, they gave awards for two different activities that I hadn't even known were options!  One was the books thing where you read a book and answered questions. I'd asked the teacher about this earlier in the year and was told they didn't do it in Kindergarten.  The other were math tests of some sort.

 

And then his final report card came home, and several behavior issues were marked at the lowest level. And I never got a letter or anything home that he was having problems doing things like respecting adults and peers, so we could work on it.  The marks in these categories had been higher earlier in the year, when we had had the occasional note home to the parents for egregious behavior.

 

ETA: I am trying to figure out how to turn this around this next year.  I know he's going to be 1st grade Gifted and Talented, which if I'm reading the website right means he's got one specific teacher. Though I know nothing about her. But I'd like to go prepared at the beginning of the year to setup the best way to keep communication flowing back and forth, since I now know that is the only time I get to talk and interact with the teacher.