KANSAS CITY, Kan. — School districts across the Kansas City metro are working to stay connected with their students and their families during this time.
Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools has had success with its multi-language call center.
Staff members are busy, fielding questions about the district's continuous learning plan.
"A lot of it was the rollout, and one of the biggest things is logging into the computers. A lot of them, you have to log in at the school first or through the district WiFi, and then it breaks down the proxy," KCKPS Chief of Staff Stephen Linkous said. "They’ll be able to do it in a pretty easy manner."
The call center is made up of bilingual community outreach workers, ESL family advocates and migrant family advocates, all of whom speak a variety of languages to help families navigate through this new adjustment.
"We have roughly 80 languages, 79 I believe, represented in our district," Linkous said. "On a daily basis we have anywhere between five to 10 languages represented so we can work with a number of members in our community if they have concerns."
Roughly 9,000 ESL students are a part of the district.
"Many of the students speak languages that our advocates and outreach workers support and the families specifically may not speak English," Director of ESL and Migrant Programs Kristen Scott said. "Even though the students, the children are starting to learn to speak English, the parents still need to have that connection to the school and the connection to the district so they understand how they can support their children at home during this process."
With many of the questions centering on the district's online learning, Linkous says they also have someone from the technology department assisting with calls.
"They’re troubleshooting with our workers that are here helping out and they’re here answering calls," Linkous said. "So there’s a lot of it ranging from, 'how do I turn this on?' all the way up to higher-level questions of, 'hey, how specifically do I use Seesaw, what specific lessons do they need to look at so we get it from A to Z.'"
Other common questions are about meal distributions and medications.
"Are we serving meals, what are the six sites were some (questions)," Linkous said. "We do have six sites daily for breakfast and lunch, so that’s probably been the most common things we’ve been hearing about. A lot of it was also medications, so if you had a student that needed medication from the school building, they made appointments, and our nurses were able to get that back to them."
District leaders say with five to 10 languages represented on a daily basis, they're fielding a couple hundred questions a day.
"We try to support as many languages as we can in this system, but we do our best supporting what we can and they are the front line between bridging that gap between home and school," Scott said. "They do it on a regular basis during regular school time, but now it’s even more essential for our families and our students who speak languages other than English to still feel connected to the school district, to the schools and to the work."
"We just want them to know that we’re with them, we’re here to assist them, we’re here to help solve any problems we can help them with," Linkous said. "If they need help with technology, we’re getting those phone numbers. We’re doing all those different pieces."
KCKPS Call Center is open Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The district states students, parents and community members can call 913-627-2455 with any questions or concerns.
