In a research piece by Benjamin Herold, there is some interesting data gathered on the ways families prefer schools to communicate with them after the authors obtained information from approximately 514,000 parents. I thought you may well find this data of interest.
Parents prefer to get school information “pushed” to them versus having to find it online. One-third of the parents were not satisfied with teacher to home communication. A quarter of the parents were not satisfied with district to home communication. Parents overwhelmingly preferred e-mail for teacher communication.
Parents prized timeliness and personalization, especially for communication about their children’s academic progress. Just 16 percent said Facebook was an effective way to communicate school and district information, whereas 78 percent of district communication officers preferred Facebook. Nearly half of the parents wanted school and district information “texted” directly to them and only 19 percent wanted to go on-line to get information. In the survey parents of elementary school students were generally more satisfied with communications from their children’s teachers than secondary
parents of older students.