Summit Academy is a private school in Bedford Nova Scotia that opened its doors in 2017. On the first day they had 60 students enrolled & now have 162 students split into an elementary and a middle school campus.
Nicole and her team were looking to simplify communications with parents and collect digital signatures for permission slips.
They chose Activity Messenger as an all-in-one solution and now send bulk SMS to parents, collect permission slips via mobile & take registrations for camps online.
Summit Academy is rooted in a philosophy of active learning. This means learning hands on in the real world for all students. They do lots of field trips, with a class out of the building almost every week.
Nicole desperately needed a way to collect digital forms from parents and be able to track who had and who hadn’t filled out permission slips.
With so many forms to fill they needed a system that could:
“We needed to find an easy way to send out permission slips. When we started it was all paper based. So we were printing, sending out and manually keeping track of who brought things back. It was a very cumbersome and extremely time-intensive”
When the school principal discovered Activity Messenger by filling in a form with another organization, she immediately asked that Nicole look into it.
“The number one reason we switched to Activity Messenger is that parents are able to sign a permission slip on their phone, just by using their fingers.”
Digital signatures drew Nicole and her team to Activity Messenger but that was just the beginning.
“When we saw all the other things you could do for schools, we realized that this checks all the boxes of the things we need help with.”
One of those boxes was taking registrations form summer camp & after school programs. Parents used to sign up on a paper form or PDF and send it in.
Some parents would forget what camp/week they signed up for, others would need an invoice. And everything was done manually. Now Activity Messenger solves all of this.
“We grew into doing all of our camp registrations and taking payments with Activity Messenger. That eliminated a huge headache for us. Our camp grew 3x this summer. We had a huge increase and Activity Messenger made it possible and much easier to manage.”
From the school administration’s perspective, Activity Messenger saves Nicole and her team many hours of repetitive tasks and makes everything easier for parents.
“Now I have a template. So when I need to sent out a new permission slip. I literally just go in, change the info and off it goes. I’ve gone from maybe an hour every time we have to create and send a permission slip to 5 minutes at most.”
Good communications with parents is one of the most important aspects of running a private school. Making sure every parent gets the right information at the right time is of utmost importance.
“And what I also love is that we streamlined all our communications with Activity Messenger so everything looks the same. Which is very important to me form a branding perspective. I like how clean it is, how consistent it is, it looks professional”
Parents at Summit Academy love just how easy everything has become with now that all forms and registrations are online and mobile-friendly.
“We’ve had parents comment on how much easier it is. You run into a parent in the parking lot and say hey I haven’t received this permission slip from you yet, i’m going to text you it really quick. Can you just do it on your phone? And they pull it out right there and then and they’re like wow that was so easy. “
Nicole keeps looking at new ways to make her administrative task easier and Activity Messenger is always top of mind.
We’ve been very happy with Activity Messenger. It seems that every 2-3 months, we find new features that make the things we need to do easier.
