The Many Languages of the Carmel Schools

From Polish to Albanian, Chinese to Spanish, the Carmel Schools are a melting pot of languages. Dozens of languages are spoken in the homes of students in the Carmel Central School District every day. 

“It used to be hard for school districts to communicate with parents and caregivers who speak so many different languages,” said Interim School Superintendent Joe McGrath. “Thanks to technology, however, it’s now as easy as a push of a button.”   

Over the summer, the district migrated to a new parent communication system called  ParentSquare. It provides a simple and safe way for our district administrators, principals, teachers and staff to communicate with parents and caregivers and keep them informed through emails, texts, phone calls and/or through a mobile app.    

One of the cool things about ParentSquare is that it allows users to select a language preference. Then, whether they are receiving a message from the school or sending an email to a teacher, parents communicate in their own languages and the app automatically does the translating. ParentSquare supports translations for more than 100 languages.  

The same is true for the district’s websites. Anyone who wants to see read one of the Carmel Central School District websites in a language other than English has only to click the Google Translate icon that sits on the homepage photo on a laptop or desktop computer. One click of the Google Translate icon will translate most of the website into any of more than 100 languages.  

This kind of technology offers a great breakthrough in our ability to keep all of our community informed about everything that is going on in the Carmel Schools.