NYC parents on school WhatsApp group chats: ‘Oh my God, it’s hell’

WNYC News

When the final bells of the school year ring next month, local parents may be sad to leave behind the steady routine of the school day and the fleeting conversations in the pickup line. But one thing they might not miss? The class WhatsApp chats, which can overload parents with information and, sometimes, endless gossip and speculation.

“Oh my God, it’s hell,” said one Brooklyn parent. “Probably once a week I’ll try to skim through, but there’s so much noise.”

She, like several parents interviewed for this story, asked not to be publicly identified out of fear of retaliation from other parents or her school community.

She’s among the thousands of New York City parents who are or have been in a school WhatsApp group chat. These group chats are holdovers from the pandemic, when many school communities migrated from class email chains to class WhatsApp chats to keep parents connected.

Most of the parents interviewed for this story said teachers and school staff weren’t in the groups, but they said they couldn’t confirm everyone’s identity in the chat. A spokesperson for The Department of Education said they were unable to comment for this story because the agency is not involved in chats.

The WhatsApp groups are not formally affiliated with the schools and range in size from single classrooms to entire grade levels – one for Brooklyn Technical High School serves nearly 1,500 freshmen and has over 350 parents, according to a parent in the group.

At their best, they are forums for fellow parents to share practical information about quaint school affairs: coordinating field days, chipping in for a gift for a teacher, or confirming graduation details.

But in practice, according to seven parents interviewed for this story, they can quickly become overwhelming, drowning participants in endless chatter about test scores, playground drama, rumors about teachers and sometimes things that have nothing to do with school whatsoever.

One parent described a lice outbreak in her daughter’s classroom, which sent the parent group into a tailspin as they deliberated about how to protect their kids from lice. She said her phone dinged for two hours straight with dozens of messages. Others described groups that clock over 100 messages a day.

Ironically, parents find school WhatsApp chats overwhelming for the same reasons they flocked to the app in the first place: it’s popular and makes chatting very, very easy.