Yes, Jessica. Nowadays parents receive regular sms  and phone calls by schools to keep them well-informed about their children and how they are doing at school. Long ago, parents used to receive only ordinary mail when there is a problem whatsover or when kids miss school, play truant and so on. SMS and phone calls are  much faster to reach to parents.Besides, there has been created an education board in each school. This board consists of elected members. The members are parents, teachers, students and school staff. They meet once a month and when there is an urgent matter to discuss. Parents, also,  come to school to check their children progress. 
Regards.

Many thanks Linsey Ott for sharing your story with us. My current position is an ELT supervisor and some of my duties are training teachers, evaluating teacher performance and write reports to the ministry of education. Before taking this job, I used to teach English and I was in the chalkface for not less than 20 years.  Having read your story, I agree with you in most of what you perceive as a difficulty to build trust between educators and students. It is difficult, too, to involve the school administrative staff in such issues because each of those stakeholders sometimes have their reasons why not to inform the other for what they think is best for the students. My personal point of view  in this respect,  is  that teachers, parents and school staff must be trustworthy to one another; and if they want to be so, they must not hide or cover up for the students. On the contrary, they need to  interfere in the kids' privacy and let the children know from their early childhood that cheating, truancy ...etc lead them to nowhere and that honesty is truth is a key to success and academic achievement.