After many years of planning, Pinewood School has officially introduced the PantherLink app. This all-in-one app facilitates communication between students, teachers, and parents.
The project was first led by Director of Communications and Marketing Katy Wells, who envisioned a unified school app, and it began development after she discovered that Veracross began offering mobile integration.
“Ms. Wells really got the ball rolling, and when she went on maternity leave, I stepped in to help coordinate everything with the team,”Associate Head of School Kyle Riches said.
Riches now collaborates closely with Director of Technology Bill Bates and Director of Academic Systems Jenn King as the lead on this project.
The push for PantherLink came from the parents who asked for an easier way to access their child’s everyday school information.
“Everything has an app these days,” Riches said. “Parents wanted the same convenience for Pinewood. It’s just so much easier to use an app rather than logging into Safari and fumbling through a browser.”
The team faced several challenges; one in particular was tailoring the app to the unique needs of each of Pinewood’s three campuses.
“Each campus has different priorities,” Riches said. “The app is connected to one Veracross system, so full customization to each campus’s specifics isn’t possible yet.”
Built from Pinewood’s partnership with Veracross, the app’s features have all been individually selected from a bank of options that Veracross provided. Administrators across different departments collaboratively chose the features in the app; each ranked their top five priorities, with the most requested tools ultimately being included. The app currently includes access to attendance reporting, schedules, announcements, and more.
Feedback from parents and teachers continue to shape PantherLink’s evolution. The implementation of the Epicurean menu on the PantherLink app has been the most recent update on the platform.
“Parents suggested adding the lunch menu, so we made it happen,” Riches said. “We really want to make it as convenient and helpful as possible for families.”
“The PantherLink app currently has about 70 or 80 percent of what we want, which is great,” Riches said. “It’s the extra 20 that I’d like to hopefully solidify moving forward.”
Riches has many different ideas for the direction the app can take and has been requesting more features from Veracross to be incorporated into the PantherLink app.
As for the future? Riches is open to ideas.
“It’s not just for us right? It’s for the community,” Riches said. “So if there’s something you want to see, let us know.”
