Brydge4Schools
Brydge4Schools provides parents with 3 specific questions or activities to do with their children at home, every day.
Project Description
“To date, the strongest evidence that parent involvement helps improve school success comes when parents get involved in helping their child learn at home.”
Source: Policy Institute for Family Impact Seminars, Bogenschneider (‘04)
THE PROBLEM:
The importance of parent engagement and its effect on academic outcomes crosses boundaries of race, school type, and region. For many students, the response to the age-old question “What did you learn at school today?” is “Nothing,” and unfortunately, parents do not have quality resources to further support academic conversation at home. This is a missed opportunity that widens the achievement gap and leads to further inequities.
Schools – especially serving low-income students – are looking for new methods to strengthen family communication, but generally have no means for tracking parent involvement other than systems that offer little insight into at-home learning. Ultimately, schools must leverage parents as stakeholders, because when parents are engaged, everyone wins.
OUR SOLUTION:
Brydge4Schools is a web and mobile platform that provides parents with 3 key activities or questions that they can use to create targeted and meaningful conversations with their children at home, every day. Additionally, parents can now assist their children more frequently with difficult academic content and have accessible resources to support this review. We are bridging the communication gap that exists between the classroom and home through a low-lift platform that is simple and easy to use for both teachers and parents!
HOW DOES IT WORK?
- Teachers input 3 key activities or questions to continue at-home learning.
- Parents automatically receive the "things" you input, directly to their phone every day.
- Parents use questions to reinforce learning at home through daily conversations.
WHAT WE PROVIDE TO SCHOOLS:
- Teachers monitor when, why, and how often parents are using our app.
- Administrators and districts can use parent-teacher interactions to evaluate parent engagement data.
- Our team provides one-on-one on-support to schools during the on-boarding process.
FUNDING EXPENSES:
In our next phase of growth, we are prioritizing product development. We will use most of our raised funds to conduct user studies that will inform the redesign of the following:
- Parent app
- Teacher-facing app
- Gradebook sync capability of existing school software
OUR TEAM:
We are a team of teachers building a product for teachers and with schools. Mehreen taught for 3 years in Mississippi and is now an AP Computer Science teacher at RePublic HS in Nashville. David, originally from Alabama and with education in his roots, taught for two years in NYC with Uncommon Schools. Richard, also an Alabama native, taught for two years in Canton, MS and continues his work in education as the Director of Operations at ReImagine Prep in Jackson, MS. We are excited about the ability of our product to move children from the bottom to the top.
LET'S DO THIS, NASHVILLE!
Thank you in advance for your support! Your contribution will help strengthen parental engagement in schools across Nashville and improve student academic outcomes for kids in any classroom. There is much work to be done to improve education for all kids, but your support will help us get one step closer.
Updates
The Campaign FAQs
Why are you choosing to crowdfund on IFW?
We are excited to use IFW as our platform to raise early funding. We have launched several pilot programs with schools, but are ready to move our product to the next level and will prioritize any raised funds towards product development. In order to better support schools, we need to make updates and improvements to our platform and will dedicate this money to working directly with schools to make these changes.
Why are you raising $25,000?
Building an education technology product is expensive. It is our top priority that parents, teachers, and schools are included in the process of our product build. The following is a breakdown of how we plan to use the money we raise on IFW.
- Parent App Design ($5,000)
- Parent App Development ($10,000)
- Teacher App Design ($5,000)
- Teacher App Development with Gradebook Sync ($5,000)
How does Brydge4Schools make money?
Our product is accessible for parents and teachers. Schools pay $10 per student per year for access to parent engagement data and gradebook sync capability. We offer a sliding scale for districts based on number of students. We are also partnering with foundations and parent organizations to offset the cost for certain schools.
Why the $10.00 price-point?
Schools would need to increase per-pupil spending by almost $1,000 to achieve the same results as strong parental involvement at home (Conway, 08). By using Brydge4Schools, schools are making a small upfront investment that prevents wasteful spending on tools and engagement programs that attempt to replicate parent engagement but fall short.
Why do you think your product is game-changing for families?
Our team is excited about the impact that Brydge4Schools can have in classrooms around the country. Through our teaching experiences, we are especially excited about our product's ability to make academic gains in low-income communities. Brydge4Schools is unique in its concept because its power transcends cell phone numbers and technological inequalities. We know that mobile inequity exists in low-income communities - that phone numbers and addresses can often be fluid. But our product's design allows a user profile to stay with a parent across any platform in which they access our product.
What evidence of success have you already experienced with your team/product?
We are an early-stage startup but have gained a lot of traction in our first year. We participated in the 2016 Lean Lab Fellowship and are currently in the Tiny Fellowship with 4.0 Schools. Mehreen is also the current female founder scholar through the Nashville Entrepreneur Center. Our team is a finalist for the Booth-Yale Education Business Plan Competition and will compete in mid-April for additional funding.
A personal shout-out for you, your child, favorite school, and/or alma mater on our Twitter page.
A 1 hour, personal phone call or coffee meeting with Mehreen to discuss B4S and parent engagement.
Receive an exclusive product demo in-person or over Skype with one of of our team members. In-person demos limited to the Nashville, DC, and Jackson, MS areas.
A classroom of your choice will receive Brydge4Schools for a semester in your name.
A school (of your choice!) will be a part of our beta program and receive on-site support from one of our team members to set up accounts. This reward also comes with a 1-on-1 lunch with our CEO at mutual favorite restaurant. (Limited to Nashville region)
Rewards
A personal shout-out for you, your child, favorite school, and/or alma mater on our Twitter page.
A 1 hour, personal phone call or coffee meeting with Mehreen to discuss B4S and parent engagement.
Receive an exclusive product demo in-person or over Skype with one of of our team members. In-person demos limited to the Nashville, DC, and Jackson, MS areas.
A classroom of your choice will receive Brydge4Schools for a semester in your name.
A school (of your choice!) will be a part of our beta program and receive on-site support from one of our team members to set up accounts. This reward also comes with a 1-on-1 lunch with our CEO at mutual favorite restaurant. (Limited to Nashville region)