gmail in a home school assistance program

As a teacher in our district's Home School Assistance Program, I mostly work with parents. This year we started using gmail to send our monthly newsletters.
We do have weekly enrichment classes for students. I can now see more ways to update parents on what we covered in class, as well as the students' reactions, by using gmail. Sometimes we give small assignments to students, which I have given on take-home papers. Almost all of my families have email now, so it would make sense to send the assignments by gmail. I could still print off papers for the very few families without email.
The HSAP teachers in our district are all part time, with varied office hours. We do use gmail to communicate among us, but I am looking forward to learning more about google chat for those communications.