Full disclosure. This week’s blog isn’t really about parenting and family issues in the traditional sense. It is about ideas and methods that can be put in place to make the part of your parenting lives that involves us easier.
We are always looking for ways to be better parenting partners. This includes staff training, virtual coffee klatches, engagement with parenting and early childhood education organizations, research and good, old-fashioned conversations with you directly. But to date, being better/simpler business partners has been a bit of a challenge. Attempts to do so have largely reflected some small things we can do on a personal level and very little in the way of technology. We can point the finger at a very outdated website as the culprit and that would honestly explain the majority of the problem. But with the launch of our new website (which is as much a digital platform as it is a website), everything is changing. While there are still a lot of very nice people waiting to help you at school, we are now able to start taking steps to make the more tedious aspects of doing business together simpler. We are just getting rolling – and we need your help.
Once you request a new account on the website you will – depending on which school your child attends – be greeted by some new menus. Chief among them is a menu for your school and there are options for the owners of your school to engage in new ways. Right now this includes online galleries, a local blog for your school, a calendaring app (dig down and you can add important things to your personal or business calendars with a few button clicks), announcements, and links to general school documents. There are also Amazon Links to resources we have tested and recommend. Again, we are just getting rolling.
Anything we can do to prevent you from having to leave work to help us accomplish a goal is inline with our goal of supporting professional, working parents. Our first parent suggestion along these lines has been to add a medicine authorization form online. We love the idea and are working on it. To start – we are figuring out the logistics of digital signatures. Assuming we can make it all work legally, soon you won’t have to drop off a note at school. We are looking at similar approaches to enrollment forms, event signups, and more. Feel free to drop us a note if you have an idea. We are all ears.
We of course have some ideas of our own. While there isn’t a lot we need to share on an individual basis, one obvious item is tuition records that can be used for tax purposes. We are piloting that functionality this month with parents that have already signed up for accounts and if it goes well, it will become the new normal. There is also an opportunity to customize online galleries with photos that feature your kids.
Our ultimate goal is to free ourselves up to do nothing but provide Montessori based early childhood education in a safe, loving environment. Every moment we can gain back by removing manual business processes gets us closer to that goal.
