Communication

Millennials will soon dominate the K12 parent population. Here’s how school comms need to adapt.

Dr. Kara Stern
2 min read
Woman drinking her morning coffee and using a laptop.

Want to communicate more easily?

In 2016, 80% of children were born to millennial parents.

What does this mean for schools? It means that in 5 years, the vast majority of K12 parents will be millennials. They’ll also be the inaugural parent generation of digital natives. What’s a digital native? People who were playing with iPhones before they could speak, or even stand!

The upshot? Millennials are always connected.

When you’re digitally connected 24/7, you value flexibility & convenience.

Millennial parents tend to schedule everything — from meetings to leisure time. They are busier than ever, but make their their kids a priority. They are hands-on parents, who focus on positive parenting rather than discipline.

And they document their kids’ lives on social media.

What does that mean for school comms?


The idea of school communications is to reduce friction with parents. To make sure they are in-the-know & able to support their kids’ learning. In order to accomplish that, school comms for millennial parents will need to be:

📱- mobile accessible
🐦 – posted on multiple platforms
📆 – generous with event reminders
📷 – full of photos documenting school life
à – translatable (20% of parents are multilingual)
📵 – and include contact info for email, DM, or text.

Why no phone number? 75% of millennials think making calls is old school, and getting unscheduled calls is rude.

Hello, digital updates. Goodbye, crumpled flyer in a backpack.


As millennial parents become the dominant K12 parent population, school communication practices will have to change to meet parents where they are. Covid has sped the process up.

If you’d like to get started, here’s a template already formatted for you.

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Dr. Kara Stern

Dr. Kara Stern began her career as an ELA teacher, then shifted into administration as a middle school principal. Dr. Stern is a fervent advocate for equitable communication and family engagement. She spent five years as Executive Director at Math for America, where she designed the professional learning community that exists to this day. An unexpected move to Tel Aviv launched her into the world of EdTech where she became the Director of Education Content for Smore and then the Head of Education Solutions at SchoolStatus. Outside of work, she indulges her love for reading, devouring two novels weekly, with a particular fondness for heists and spy stories.

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