Overton Implementing Liaison To Communicate With Parents

Overton County Schools have created a new Digital Liaison position in each school to better communicate with parents.

Director of Schools Donnie Holman said the duties of the position include maintaining the school’s Facebook page and helping keep teacher websites up to date. Holman said the goal of the position is to keep parents as informed as possible while utilizing the digital tools the schools have at their disposal. He said this modern communication is necessary as times have changed.

“Years ago a note sent home on paper was fine, was expected, but things like that just simply don’t work as well, because our society they’re not accustomed to that,” Holman said. “They’re accustomed to seeing everything in a link, you know, a web link to tons of information now.”

Holman said this position is not a new hire. He said teachers already at the schools were selected for the position and will receive a stipend for their extra work.

“We posted the position,” Holman said. “Anyone within the school system had the opportunity to apply for it, and the administrators of the school interviewed those people and wrote letter of recommendations to recommend who they felt would be the best for their school.”

Holman said this work normally falls upon administrators to do, and this position should help balance their workload.

“This would help the administrators by making sure that someone was giving diligent time to this task to make sure the teacher’s websites, the school’s websites, the Facebook pages and whatever other social media forms is being used to make sure our parents and our community have the most up-to-date information,” Holman said.

Holman said the Digital Liaison will be expected to offer suggestions on how to better school and teacher websites. He said the person will also be responsible for reaching out to parents through digital means when necessary.

“One part of this is, they are helping to increase family engagement in all of our schools,” Holman said. “Us having our families and our parents involved in our schools is essential. We need them to be active, and we need them to understand what we are doing.”