App allows Berryville schools to share news quickly

Staying informed with the happenings of Berryville Schools has never been easier.

The school district debuted its Berryville Public Schools smart phone application in May. The app allows parents, staff and members of the community can stay on top of all things Bobcats.

As of Friday, Aug. 4, the app had been downloaded 677 times from the Apple Store and 349 times on Android platforms, according to Tammi Davis, the district’s director of curriculum and federal programs.

“One of the most important aspects of the app is that we can share positive information and celebrate our students and staff members faster and more efficiently thank ever before,” Davis said. “Any tool that we can access to communicate the good things going on in the district, we want to do it.”

The idea for an app for the district started last spring when administrators researched similar platforms at other schools in the state.

“Some of us were talking about other districts that had that option,” Davis said. “And so we started looking into it.”

Davis said she connected with a company in Little Rock that develops apps for many school districts.

“I connected with them and they came to our district and gave us a demo and talked to us about it, showed us all the features,” she said. “We decided to go ahead and jump on board because it’s a great tool for our families as well as our staff.”

The home screen of the app features a “feed” section with updated school news and the district’s event calendar. Other features include daily lunch menus, documents, information on each campus and a staff list, including a platform to send emails to faculty directly from the app.

“What we have heard has all been positive and the staff has been really pleased with it,” Davis said regarding feedback since the app debuted in May. “We’ve had parents comment and say they really like it. They really like things right at their fingertips.”

“Anything that we can use to communicate with our stakeholders, whether that be parents, business members, community members, just anyone that’s based in our school system. Anything we can do to improve communication is always a positive for sure.”

Davis said certain staff members frequently send out information on social media. Now, news and information can be pushed out to many services at one time, she said.

“It simplifies our outreach,” Davis said. “For example, we put things on our website, we post things on our social media and then we had a school messenger system. This takes all of those tools that we’ve used for communication and puts it in one spot.

“I posted something last night for Bobcat Academy after-school program. I go into the platform and I can upload a picture if I choose to or whatever I’m going to put on there, click the message and I can post on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and our website [at one time]. I could also include the messenger piece if I chose to, and that’s where people that are signed up would receive a text or phone call about it. So it’s just like a one-stop-shop place where we can push that message out really quickly.”

Davis said since the app wasn’t launched until near the end of the last school year, the district is anticipating it becoming more popular in coming weeks as schools get back intosession.

“Everybody will be back, activities start, sports will start, football, those types of things,” she said. “With activities back in full swing I look for more people to access the app and take advantage of it.

“The BPS app is certainly an avenue that will continue to help us reach one of our goals, which is to celebrate success along the way.”