Question: Is facebook a good way to communicate to parents

I am looking for ways to be in touch with the parents? Not many visit the website on a regular basis, and I am limited to the number of flyers I can sent out. I want to start a facebook page as information only, no one will be able to postback on it. My principal is very nervous about us having a page. Has anyone used this avenue, yet?

Asked by Anonymous

Answers:

Advice from PTO Today

Craig writes:
A lot of groups are using Facebook -- it can be a very effective way to reach parents. If you don't allow comments, then there's not much risk. Are you doing email notifications? If you haven't checked it out yet, our (free) Parent Express Emailsystem lets you send group emails, flyers, newsletters, etc. and is designed specifically for PTOs and PTAs.

Community Advice

bnlred writes:
We have and it has worked very well. Like you said, we only post very basic, general information and never post pics of kids etc. We have the security set at its highest level and only our president and VP are the administrators. They constantly watch the "friends" that have joined and if there is someone they don't know, they find out who they are or block them. It has been a wonderful tool for communicating with parents in this digital age and also saves on paper use not having to send multiple flyers home. Hope that helps :)

Community Advice

momtofour writes:
We use it. Before launching it we sent out a questionaire to the parents about what they wanted/didn't want so it was clear. They voiced their concerns ,the board voted on it and it was up and running. Ours is a closed group so it's difficult to find unless you specifically search for the groups name. We do let our parents post as long as there are no pictures,ads and everyone is nice. NO problems yet except 1-2 ads. When we had a tsumnami warning & school closure ,FB parents were the 1st to hear about it. So many parents are on it....

Community Advice

rk315 writes:
So far, so good for us as well. We allow parents to post & have also allowed community members to join. PTG members are constantly monitoring to make sure that there is no objectional postings. We have found that it's a good way to get info out to the parents. They're more likely to read something on fb before they look at another paper that their kid brings home.

Community Advice

VolunteerX3 writes:
We too have a closed group. That ensures only those belonging to our school have access. We also have a website which we built with myvlink.org. It automatically posts items from our website to our FB page. It also automatically creates EBlasts and Newsletters using News, Events, and Volunteer Opportunities that we've posted.