Eric Pustejovsky is Superintendent at Abbott Independent School District, a small PreK-12 district in Texas. With a mission to make sure every child succeeds in the classroom, Eric and his staff added Edlio Mass Communication to their toolkit for streamlined communication with families. Staff and parents alike love how easily Edlio's Mass Communication fits into their daily routines.
The Challenge
“We started to notice that more and more of our parents seem to prefer to receive information via text,” says Eric Pustejovsky.
Abbott ISD was using a service to send weekly voice calls to parents for announcements and schedules for each day. While these worked well for Sunday evenings, they found other messages were not as successful.
“If we had to do an emergency announcement, or just an update announcement during the week, parents would get a little annoyed by voice calls during the day,” Eric explains. “We wanted an alternative to them having to answer the phone, listen to the call out message, and then get back to work.”
They were also relying on staff members and coaches to push out information to parents. One coach would send updates via a Facebook group, others would use various apps. “So the issue we had was parent confusion,” says Eric. “They had to remember ‘okay, this coach uses this format, I have to go find that.’”
The Solution
Abbott ISD has been using Edlio’s website CMS since 2011. When it came time to review new solutions for direct messaging, Edlio Mass Communication's ease of use and integration with the CMS stood out. “As an administrator it's so much easier to deal with one streamlined program,” says Eric. “Everything is housed under one roof and is super easy. I don’t have to learn multiple systems.”
Edlio’s support was also key. “Somebody was in here the other day and had a question,” Eric explains. “I said, ‘let me ask Misty!’ I think that’s big, that I can put a name to that person. It’s not like ‘let me contact Edlio’ it’s ‘let me go talk to Misty and she’ll give me the answers.’”
The Result
“Parents have been very appreciative that they only have to look for one means of communication: text message,” says Eric. “It's just so much easier and fits into the habits that they're already doing.”
Abbott ISD has found a balance that keeps everyone informed without being intrusive. They have found parents don't mind getting quick text updates throughout the week.
“Yesterday we had a varsity basketball game that was canceled. That was a perfect use of the mass communication system,” Eric explains. “I can push that one-time information to all the stakeholders. They can just look on their phone to see the game has been canceled.”
Weekly voice announcements continue using Edlio, with summary of the week ahead and reminders of upcoming events and due dates. They haven’t explored the email channel yet, but they do plan on sending emergency alerts on all channels, including their website. Edlio's Mass Communication makes that quick and easy with the integration to Edlio Websites.
“Edlio makes it really easy, and I'm not just ‘commercial talking’ for you guys. I spend a lot of time on the platform on a weekly and almost daily basis, so I really mean when I just said.”
Final Thoughts
When asked to share advice he would give to other schools using digital communication tools, Eric says “Take your time, research the products that are out there and find what works. Hopefully everything that works for you will be streamlined on one platform. For us, that's been Edlio. It's just really simplified my life in terms of pushing information out to our community and our stakeholders.”
