LEAD Elementary takes a trailblazing approach to school education. They use technology to facilitate literacy, writing, and other creative endeavors—and modern tools like Envoy support their tech-forward mission of empowering students and families.

Pattie Dullea, the school’s principal, also wants to foster an inclusive, positive, and active school community of students and parents, especially given the positive impact of parent involvement on educational outcomes.

Encouraging parent participation is difficult for many schools, and LEAD’s bilingual, predominantly Hispanic community adds its own dimension. LEAD’s unique challenge is encouraging families to participate in their child’s education, yet many parents may not feel comfortable speaking English, or come from a culture where questioning teachers isn’t the norm.

Envoy’s visitor registration system helps LEAD create an environment that encourages community participation and immediately makes everyone feel at home.

Makes visitors feel welcome from the beginning

The front desk is LEAD’s first point of contact with their native Spanish-speaking families. LEAD took advantage of Envoy’s language translation feature to display the check-in system in Spanish. This means that parents, grandparents, and caretakers feel at ease and “personally welcomed,” said Denora Smith, the school’s receptionist.

Prior to Envoy, school administrators were concerned that older visitors, like grandparents, would have difficulty with a digital sign-in system. “Fortunately, visitors are able to figure it out on their own. They even help each other with signing in!” said Smith. “This means I don’t have to stop what I’m doing to help them.”

Fortunately, visitors are able to figure it out on their own. They even help each other with signing in! This means I don’t have to stop what I’m doing to help them.

Envoy’s seamless visitor management system ensures that visitor information is recorded in one place. It helps LEAD’s receptionists learn the visitors’ names and greet them warmly on return visits.

LEAD also uses Envoy’s badge feature to automatically print visitor badges. Badges help faculty spot visitors on campus and personally say hello, making visitors feel like the whole school knows their name.

Helps secure crucial community-focused funding

LEAD’s Parent Involvement Project (PIP) encourages parents to volunteer at LEAD to increase community involvement. LEAD is extremely proud of the program, which is part of their commitment to empower students’ families, said Erin Demartini, Teacher on Special Assignment.

The program’s funding is conditional on parent participation. “Our donor needs to see that parents are coming in and participating in PIP for it to continue,” said Demartini.

Envoy has been crucial for helping the school export records on parent participation in PIP, demonstrating the program’s strong draw. “With Envoy, we can easily print a report on the number of participants at a PIP event, as well as how many hours our parents spent in each classroom,” said Demartini.

“This saves us so much time. Before Envoy, we’d make photocopies of the paper sign-in sheets and manually enter the data. We no longer have to decipher chicken scratch to figure out people’s names,” said Demartini. Envoy’s digital visitor log ensures that everyone’s names are collected—nothing slips through the cracks.

“I’m really happy with Envoy,” said Denora. “When I speak with other schools, I tell them that there is a better way to do this—that’s Envoy.”

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