Reducing Information Overload: Billings Catholic Schools Streamlines Communication with MyPowerHub

“I think MyPowerHub is great. Pulling all of the strings into one coherent picture is the perfect solution to the information overload we experience every day,” says Joanna Brailer, director of technology at Billings Catholic Schools.

Serving nearly 1,000 students, Billings Catholic Schools has built a large school community around its families, students, and staff. They offer over 50 extracurricular clubs and activities and take part in countless community service events, so it’s easy to see why there are, as Brailer says, many strings to connect when it comes to communication.

Top Reasons Why Billings Catholic Schools Chose MyPowerHub

Brailer’s school was seeking a solution to simplify engagement for their school families. “It boils down to having too many parts (to manage), and our parents really want a one-stop-shop. They want everything in the same place,” she says. The school had been fielding complaints about each teacher using different communication and family engagement tools. “It can be a big frustration,” she adds.

Frequently, families at Billings Catholic Schools care for multiple children enrolled across several buildings, so the need to consolidate communication was great. “Information overload is a problem for parents,” explains Brailer, “and MyPowerHub reduces that for them and makes it easy to synthesize information onto the same screen.” Billings Catholic Schools was eager to try the platform to give families a single hub with familiar tools and better learning support.

Brailer says that MyPowerHub also guides families to stay on top of ongoing assignments before assessments take place. “Parents have a tendency to go right to PowerSchool SIS to check on their children, but we would like them to go to Schoology. They should be getting feedback from the point of instruction instead,” she says. MyPowerHub solved this challenge because it consolidated PowerSchool SIS information and Schoology information into one location, enabling families to see their child’s academic progress on both platforms.

How Did Families Respond to MyPowerHub?

Families at Billings Catholic Schools now report that they like seeing the combination of assignments and grades together. The specific tools that they love the most, though, are the communications tools. These tools are now the only ones that parents and teachers use. Without them, says Brailer, the old methods they were using were far less straightforward: “When they had too many choices, they became paralyzed.”

With the adoption of MyPowerHub, community feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “It’s so nice not to go to three places for a lot of information,” one parent said. Families like the single-pane-of-glass view, and another parent noted, “This is way better than what we had before.”

The whole school community has become more engaged in student learning and success. At Billings Catholic Schools, the first six months of MyPowerHub usage resulted in more than half of 5th-8th grade families logging in, and over 75% of parents of high school families are using it as well.

Recommendations from an Early Adopter

“I would recommend MyPowerHub to other districts because it streamlines the flow of information which is very important in this day and age,” says Brailer. “It puts everything in one place which is what a parent wants and needs. “

This product makes communication in an organization easy, she adds. In fact, she has only assisted a small handful of parents who needed help using it, and it was only to show them how to log in. As an early adopter of MyPowerHub, she also advises communicating with families about how it will be used to streamline community connections.

MyPowerHub’s communications tools, between the newsfeed, calendar, and RSVP are excellent features, Brailer continues, since they eliminate the need for external signup websites and other methods that are hard to track and even harder for school IT staff to help with.

Conclusion

With MyPowerHub, Billings Catholic Schools was able to integrate PowerSchool SIS and Schoology into one easy-to-use interface. This change also helped reinforce a schoolwide initiative to help families engage in learning prior to assessments. Overall, parents have shared positive feedback, and the whole school community can now access data and communications any time with a centralized, streamlined system.

Moreover, families can engage with a more complete picture of their students’ learning and experience more streamlined communication with their school.