On June 3, Houston Independent School District announced that, among other “updates,” they would switch to ParentSquare to communicate with parents “quickly and clearly.”

While ParentSquare has succeeded in sending information to parents, HISD’s new choice of communication has one major flaw: It neglects the students.

ParentSquare currently does not support communication between students and teachers. That’s the purpose of its companion app, StudentSquare, an app which, as of the fourth week of school, has yet to be implemented in HISD.

At the elementary or middle school level, this wouldn’t be an issue, as most communication goes directly to parents anyway, but creating this communication gap at any HISD high school, especially one as big as Bellaire, creates a critical issue: Students are not informed about anything.

Even if the app is only unavailable for the first month of school, every day without StudentSquare is a day that teachers don’t have the resources to tell students about last-minute changes. Students also lose the resources to ask their teachers for clarity on assignments. This is especially prevalent in the beginning of the year when students are adjusting to their new teachers, classes and schedules – students need to be in the loop.

For AP Biology teacher Sonia Charbonneau, the switch to ParentSquare stripped this year’s students of the “advantages” that came with Remind.

“I don’t know if [students] were missing out on important information, but they certainly didn’t have some of the advantages that my students last year did,” Charbonneau said. “Because I could communicate with students from the very beginning about anything I needed to say, I would send out Reminds about what the averages were, when makeups were, all of that information. It was more like 1980 the first few weeks, [students] just had to wait until they got back to school.”

One of the biggest concerns for Spanish 2 teacher Micaela Segal de la Garza is the dilution of information taking place as a result of using multiple platforms at once.

“We’re going to have to advocate for a more adequate replacement for [Remind] because otherwise we will just be using Remind anyway,” Segal de la Garza said. “‘You checked Remind, but did you check your email? But we also sent it in these other ways.’ We hope that it isn’t super disadvantageous to anybody. But the possibility is, of course, there.”

Students aren’t happy either. According to a poll of 96 students, 95% of respondents said they didn’t like the change to ParentSquare, with one student citing that Remind was “perfectly functional” so the switch was “useless.”

Although the transition to ParentSquare isn’t inherently bad, the issue lies in the rollout for teachers and delay in implementation for StudentSquarefor students. As HISD continues to make changes to better the district, whether it be in communication, technology or curriculum, there needs to be a more efficient structure for execution.

Because if HISD thinks it’s hip to be on ParentSquare, all sides still need to be equal.