ParentSquare

Bellingham Public Schools uses ParentSquare as a communication tool for regular communications as well as for safety and emergencies. ParentSquare gives families choices in how and when they receive communications, and also provides a two-way option for communicating in preferred languages. This means a teacher, coach, adviser or principal can quickly message families and communicate back and forth. Families can also get all messages from their school in one daily digest.

Families can also log in to ParentSquare and find all messages from the school (from teachers, coaches, support staff, club advisers, etc.) in one place, and can communicate through ParentSquare as well..

We also use ParentSquare for emergency and inclement weather messages to staff and families.

You can customize your language settings by going to "My Account" and clicking "Change This" under language settings. From there, you can choose any language you prefer from the drop down menu and you will start to receive content in that language. Here is a help article on how to change your language settings.

If you can't sign into ParentSquare with your email or phone number, please contact your school office to make sure your contact information is correct in Skyward.

For each individual with a ParentSquare account, users can fine tune their notification settings after logging in by clicking My Account from the upper-right corner dropdown and then Customize Your Settings under Notification Settings.

Here is a help article on changing your notification settings.

For general announcements via the Posts tool, each user can select Instant, Digest or Off (choose to turn off notifications altogether excluding emergency alerts and notices) for email, text, and app notifications.

For new accounts with preferences not yet set, Digest is the default setting for message delivery. Make sure you update your delivery setting if you prefer Instant delivery.

So, what’s the difference? Please read below.

• Instant: you'll receive an email and/or text and/or an app notification every time a notice or message is sent (in real time).
• Digest: you'll receive an email and/or text and/or an app notification once a day in the evening (delivers at approximately 6 pm) with all posts from that day.

• If using the digest setting, ensure you read through your digest email which may contain multiple messages with important information.
• There is one digest per school. If you have students at multiple schools, you will receive one digest email per school.

• Off: no notifications about posts will be sent to you. Emergency Alerts and Notices will still be sent, and School Alerts if turned on.

* Additional Notes:

• Post senders can override the digest option to send instantly to all recipients despite user preferences, but in general should only do so when appropriate.
• Notification settings apply to Posts only. The Messages tool, intended for one-to-one direct messaging or small group messaging only, is instant delivery no matter the user settings.

Here are the most common reasons and their corresponding solutions:

• Check your Notification Preferences on My Account page. Are your notification preferences on?
• Check your spam folder for emails from donotreply@parentsquare.com.
• Add the domain ParentSquare.com or the email address donotreply@parentsquare.com  to the safe senders list in your email client (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) You can google how to do this.
• If using Gmail:Go to Settings. At the bottom of the pane, click Mail. In the left pane, select Mail > Accounts > Block or allow.
• Under Blocked Senders, select the address or domain you want to unblock, and then select.
• Text the word START to 66458. This will resume text messaging to your phone.

You can submit contact change requests directly in ParentSquare, or you can call your school directly to request a change to your contact information. Every contact information change request submitted in ParentSquare is reviewed and changed by office staff in our Skyward student database system.

Skyward holds our contact data and sends it to ParentSquare. Any changes made in ParentSquare will be reported to the school office and confirmed so that it is reflected correctly in Skyward.

If you wish to change your contact information in ParentSquare, please click on your name in the top right corner and go to "My Account."

From your account page, click "Edit Account" and you will be able to change your contact information. If you receive an error message when trying to edit your phone number or email, please contact your school office to make the change. Here is a help article on changing account information.

Please note that ParentSquare only reflects one phone number for families. If you want to make sure that all your phone numbers are available for school staff, please login to Skyward Family Access to see all contacts on file for you.

Once a contact change is made in our Skyward student database system, it can take up to 24 hours for your contact information to be synced from Skyward to ParentSquare.

ParentSquare notifies those contacts listed as a primary parent, parent, and guardian within Skyward. ParentSquare is an all-in-one platform that contains personally identifiable information for each student, therefore, we only engage with those designated contacts.

To download, click here for the Apple App Store link and click here for the Google Play Android App Store link. Or, search for ParentSquare in the App Store.

No, if you prefer, you can navigate to https://www.parentsquare.com/signin from a computer and do all of the same ParentSquare activities.

No. Each contact has their own private account. They will, however, see everything related to the shared student. They will NOT see contact information on the other guardians.  

No, you will automatically receive messages from ParentSquare even if you do not register your account. However, what a registered user can see and have access to and what a non-registered user can see and have access to are different. For a detailed list of registered vs non-registered please click here to view an article on registration settings.

ParentSquare is the main mode of communication for our staff, and we also have communications tools like email, Final Forms, and Seesaw. We encourage the majority of communication to be through ParentSquare.

ParentSquare is a secure connection with our student information system (Skyward) to enable communication contact info. It pulls school-database data only and has a high level of security since this is how the company connects its product with school district databases for use. The data is not shared by ParentSquare.

Just like with any product we use that interfaces with Skyward (Office 365, Seesaw for elementary school, Homeroom, etc) the company must comply with privacy for students per the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) as well as privacy for staff information.

ParentSquare has a complete Privacy Policy/Terms of Use available here: https://www.parentsquare.com/privacy/.