Recently we sat down with Kristen Thomsen, Principal of Del Cerro Elementary in Mission Viejo, CA. Del Cerro is a small school in the large Saddleback Valley Unified School District.

"In the past, we looked at potentially using ParentSquare - that seems to be a common tool. Some of our teachers were using Class Dojo, but ultimately we decided on Bloomz and enjoy being able to better connect with our families.

We started using Bloomz back in 2021 when the pandemic hit, and it came from a desire to still be connected when we all moved to distance learning. Despite the pandemic, we still wanted to share what was happening in all the classrooms and with our students.

Over the last few years, we have made an effort to make school as normal as possible. So, the fact that we could post on Bloomz and parents could either like or leave a comment was incredible. Sometimes parents would have a question about something that they would post, and other parents would respond before I even had a chance! With Bloomz, we built that community. We were all interacting together!

And then last year, things at Del Cerro took off even more when we were able to create photo albums for all of the different events and have it accessible to our families. Teachers used the messaging when they wanted to get something out really quickly; these Bloomz posts took the place of emails.

As the principal, I would send out weekly posts, and I'd include not just what was happening at Del Cerro that week, but I would include pictures from the week celebrating students that came to my office for a positive office referral. I would also make a point to shout out to classrooms for something that they may have done that week. We would also post pictures of our teachers and students interacting and running different programs on site - which our parents loved seeing.

All in all, I highly recommend Bloomz and have been loving using the app for our school!"

Watch our full interview with Kristen Thomsen here.