Uniondale's new app aims to forge a deeper connection between the school district and families

Befitting this new digital age of information, the Uniondale school district has unveiled an innovative application to help bridge the information gap among students, parents and district officials for the upcoming school year.

The app, Uniondale UUFSD, NY, was created by Thrillshare, a mobile developer that specializes in creating platforms that help schools manage online interactions between them and the families they serve. It will empower the district to establish its own unique identity online and keep parents in the loop with individual school updates and information on district events and activities.

The app is designed to serve as a communications hub, and will share news, announcements and updates with each school’s social media accounts, simplifying administrative processes. It will also give users the ability to view everything from school calendars to lunch menus to staff directories, and to receive personalized, real-time alerts and updates on their phones.

“The app has all of our schools, so parents would go into settings and designate the schools they want to allow notifications from, and then once that’s done, they have access to that school’s feed,” Ana Ritter, the district’s director of instructional technology and library media services, explained. “So whenever that school is posting an event, it comes automatically right to this new mobile app.”

Ritter added that parents’ anxiety-filled days of filling out forms brought to them by their children, who are then trusted to return them to school, are long gone. Parents can now sign and upload important documents, such as health forms and permission slips, straight to the app.

Ritter told the Herald that the inspiration for the idea was the success of a similar platform implemented by the East Meadow school district, with internal discussions about Uniondale’s possible creation of its own app beginning in March 2022, led by district Superintendent Monique Darrisaw-Akil.

“We have to be proactive in our approach if we want our families to engage with the district and showcase the excellent programs we provide, said Darrisaw-Akil. “Families have an expectation around receiving information about events and happenings in real time. The new app allows us to do that by giving families the opportunity to opt in to receive alerts about district news,” she concluded.

According to Ritter, about one-third of parents of the nearly 6,600 district students have already downloaded the app. Although this is a statistic that she and other district officials are proud of, Ritter said she hoped to see that number rise to near 100 percent as the school year begins.

The app, and others like it, Ritter added, are the future of school communication, tools that are beneficial and easy to use. “We have a very diverse parent community,” she said. “We also have a lot of newly immigrated parents, so they might not be hip so much to social media. This has our own live feed, so you don’t have to be a participant in social media.”

Ritter also explained that the app is compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, meaning, for instance, that photos that appear on it can be identified by text or audio for those with visual impairments.

To stay up to date on the latest news and events around the Uniondale school district, you can download the app from the App Store or the Google Play Store by searching for its title, Uniondale UUFSD, NY.