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Selecting Languages in BB ParentLink

More than 1,000 families in D49 have a language background other than English, and some of these families have requested to receive school and district messages in their native language. We can easily accommodate this with our Blackboard/ParentLink notification system. 

The instructional video, below, from the CLDE department will show you how to easily select other languages when sending emails and texts through ParentLink.  

The attached document has a list of languages spoken by families at your school. Every time you use ParentLink, please use this list to select these preferred languages. We are encouraging our families to provide, or update their preferred language in PowerSchool, which will improve the effectiveness of the language selection tool in ParentLink. If you encounter a family that speaks another language, please let them know their language preference can be updated by your school registrar, or by contacting the CLDE department. Parents can also update their communication preferences using this link: https://forms.gle/Lm6dJXYTroABgL6J9

A few helpful hints:

  • Write plainly in English for better translations, avoiding colloquialisms, cliches and slang. 

  • Limit attachments. Word documents and PDFs are not translated in ParentLink. Attachments are also very hard to read on smartphones. 

  • Your school website has a translation function and is responsive to smartphones, so linking to a school web page is a good alternative to provide information that might have been sent by PDF. Consider demonstrating this translation feature at parent engagement events. 

Here are a few other resources that can also be helpful.