TTHM has been producing School District Teletownhalls for over a decade. We help districts get direct feedback from parents, students and community members in a controlled virtual forum. For years, our forums focused on updating parents at the beginning of the year or discussing the school budget around bond initiatives. Our telephone town hall format allowed us to feature district leaders and field selected questions.
During the pandemic, the needs of our school district clients changed. As rapid changes occurred with the way in which students were receiving their education, telephone town hall meetings were utilized by school districts to reach out to parents to keep them updated with truthful information. Most schools immediately went to online learning, but there were challenging situations for those in remote areas with limited access to technology, or those in lower income households who did not have access to internet, computers, or rides to libraries which were mostly all closed for the emergency.
Some parents that I spoke with as an operator were very worried about how the challenge of online learning was affecting their kids. Others were distressed that their young children weren’t learning how to speak as they returned to school where everyone, teachers included, were required to wear masks. Still others wondered how their high school students were going to find connections to colleges without the typical campus visits and meetings with advisors.
As the administrations considered going back to in-person learning for students, or adopting a hybrid model, virtual town halls allowed concerned parents to reach out and ask questions of the folks making the rules. Many parents felt heard and were more understanding of the decisions being made by the district personnel by listening in to the discussions happening in the town hall meetings.
For those parents who had deeper questions, the ability to capture their email address and/or cell phone number for them to receive a follow-up or an e-newsletter, was paramount in the tele-town hall meetings. As an operator, I enjoy having the ability to listen to someone, make sure they feel heard, offer them support and gather information to keep in contact with them. Many times these small interactions seem to make a difference by brightening their day and making them feel like they matter. Learn about how we are currently serving School District clients.
TTHM Operators work to create real connections between people across physical and linguistic boundaries. Sometimes outreach is as simple as holding a managed virtual forum. For some communities that means including a simulcast in another language like Spanish, Vietnamese or Korean. Know that you can always Contact Us for a walkthrough of our virtual forum production process and discuss which tools and technologies best fit your goals.
About Becca:
As a TTHM Operator since 2020, Becca has collected thousands of e-newsletter opt-ins and processed even more live questions for a myriad of telephone town hall events. Producing forums for school districts, political campaigns, medical insurance providers, labor unions, sitting legislators and cities around the country has helped Becca to gain a wealth of knowledge from client speakers and event participants. Becca works from her home office on Florida’s Gulf Coast, but she has produced live forums while working remotely from Colorado, Montana, Iowa and lots of other places in between!