ParentSquare looks back on 10 years of unifying Santa Barbara County school-home communications

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — ParentSquare is helping educators and families communicate better, especially after a virtual year online.

The company was built by parent and computer engineer Anupama Vaid who set out to build a solution to engage every family with school communications.

She and her husband Sohit Wadha developed ParentSquare, which now celebrates its 10th anniversary.

ParentSquare has become the premier unified school-home engagement platform for K-12 education.

The program launched at Peabody Charter School a decade ago and has expanded nationwide

It is currently being used in half of California’s schools and in 44 states. 

"When I was working, I was getting so much information from so many different sources at my child's school, it was nearly impossible to stay on top of it all. When I transitioned to be a stay-at-home mom and volunteered as a room parent, I realized that being involved with school is like a full-time job, and I experienced a big difference in how connected I felt with our school community," Vaid said.

"Those experiences guided my vision for a parent engagement tool that would work from the district office to the individual classroom," Vaid continued. "I wanted to bring that feeling of connectedness to every family at school—and in a very intuitive and easy to manage way."

"Our 10th anniversary comes at a critical time as schools continue to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic," Wadhwa said. "Districts and schools now rely on our platform more than ever before, for everything from emergency notifications to classroom communications to daily health screening workflows."

This year, ParentSquare was a CODiE Awards finalist in the "Best Customer Experience in EdTech" category, which recognized companies, products, and people in the education technology sector that have gone the extra mile in response to COVID-19.

One of the most vital features that ParentSquare developed in the wake of the pandemic was its Health Screening form. The feature was launched in August 2020 and has been adopted by thousands of schools, resulting in over 20 million daily health screening submissions by staff and students in its first year.

As ParentSquare enters its second decade, the founders are looking both back and ahead. "We are grateful to the millions of parents and educators who have embraced our unified approach and commitment to communications equity," Wadhwa concluded. “We look forward to continuing to develop new products and scale our services to meet their most pressing communications needs."

For more information on ParentSquare, you can click here.