Metro Nashville School District partners with TeacherLists – Case Study

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Metro Nashville Schools Partner With TeacherLists To Ease the Burden of Supply Shopping for Parents

Metro Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) began searching for a communication solution for their back-to-school supply lists in early 2018. Their initial motivation was to find a way to get all their school lists posted in one place that was easily accessible for all parents before the annual sales-tax-free holiday.

Before finding TeacherLists, the district communications department was in charge of updating every school supply list for the whole district on each of the 157 different schools’ websites. The task of uploading almost 600 school supply lists in a timely way became unmanageable with the resources they had. When a staff member heard about TeacherLists, she thought it could be a potential solution to their issue. Her hope was that if TeacherLists could take on the task of posting the supply lists, their department would be able to spend that time concentrating on other back-to-school priorities.

The Rollout  
Individual teachers, staff, and administrators uploaded their lists to the TeacherLists site. TeacherLists became the central hub for all the district’s supply lists, meaning the lists would all be uniform in design and content across the district. The individual schools handled their own uploads, freeing up the communications team to focus on larger district matters.

• After the schools had their lists posted on TeacherLists, MNPS added a section to their district website that directed every parent to the district page on TeacherLists. Once on this page, parents were able to search and find individual lists by school and grade.
• MNPS thought some parents might not know to visit the district site for lists, so they went one step further by adding a link to the footer of each school’s homepage. Now parents know where to look to find the information no matter where their children go to school, and they can easily navigate to the TeacherLists district page and find all the lists they need.

Results
In the first year, MNPS has had great success with the new list process. It has saved time and frustration for the district team, the schools, and the families. The MNPS district page had more than 26,000 visitors to their lists on TeacherLists during back-to-school time in 2018. This allowed every family a quick and easy way to find lists for all their children in one place, even if they had children at multiple schools in the district. In fact, more than 8,600 families selected the one-click e-commerce shopping option TeacherLists offers in partnership with Target, Walmart, Office Depot, and other retailers. And the Metro Nashville staff? They loved that they were now able to deal with other pressing priorities while parents were getting a much more streamlined and convenient back-to-school experience!

Future Plans
As MNPS looks toward their future with TeacherLists, they have a few ideas on how the relationship will continue to grow successfully.

⇒  Easy Updates
Since TeacherLists is now the central hub for all the MNPS lists, teachers and administrators will save time updating and sharing their lists each year; the old lists are easily copied and updated for next year and years to come.
⇒  Early Action
They’re currently working on a plan to encourage teachers and staff to update their lists early, with the hope that all lists will be available in the spring so parents have access to them throughout the summer.
⇒  Across the Board
As a way to further simplify the process, MNPS is considering developing districtwide supply lists that would function as the templates for all schools. After uploading the “most needed” items for each grade, individual teachers would be able to access their lists and update them with additional items specific to their classrooms. TeacherLists is working with the district to gather
data on these “most needed” items and to lay out a process for the individual teachers.
⇒  Accessibility for All
TeacherLists has recently signed with Promet Source, a leader in ADA web accessibility, to help ensure that the TeacherLists site is ADA compliant for all users. Districts, including MNPS, can now be comfortable knowing that all classroom supply lists are accessible to every parent in their district, no matter their level of ability.

If you would like to get started posting your lists, please visit our Login Page

Have any questions?
Call or email us at:
800/644-3516 x6
tlsupport@teacherlists.com

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