Questions, answered plainly

In a weekly grid — one row per student, with Daily, Quiz and Test columns — then Save. Your grade weights turn the scores into an average and letter grade automatically. On a phone the same page shows one day at a time, so nothing scrolls sideways. Tip: save before switching weeks so nothing is lost.

Yes. The gradebook and attendance pages show one day at a time on a phone — tap the day, and the whole class fits on one screen with nothing scrolling sideways. The save button stays fixed at the bottom, and typing a score brings up the number pad. On a computer you get the full week grid.

Yes. One Default set of weights covers the whole school, and you can add weights for particular grades on top of it — the younger grades often just average everything rather than weighting tests more heavily, and that is a switch rather than a workaround. A grade level can only belong to one set, so two rules can never disagree about the same child.

Only when somebody is away. Every school morning each student is recorded present before the day starts, so on a normal day there is nothing to open and nothing to press. If a child is absent, late or leaves at lunchtime, the teacher changes that one student. It only runs on real school days and never overwrites what a teacher has entered.

Yes — that's the point. A classroom carries a checklist of the grade levels it covers, so a single room can hold K–3 with one teacher. Subjects are scoped to grades too, so a teacher only ever grades the subjects their students actually take.

Add her as staff like any other teacher, then put her on the class with the dates she is covering. For those dates she can take attendance, enter grades, record behavior and read the teacher’s lesson plans for that room — and when the dates run out, so does the access, without anyone having to remember to take it away. The teacher whose room it is keeps everything throughout.

The office sets up the event types and any school-wide events. Teachers can add their own class events and edit the ones they created. Parents see a read-only view relevant to their child. Student birthdays appear automatically.

Yes. A report card is everything the teacher entered, gathered up and run through your grade weights — no hand arithmetic. Averages are rounded down (a 91.9 is a 91, never bumped up over a grade line), shown as whole numbers by default with a matching letter grade — you can switch to one or two decimals if you prefer. The teacher can add a comment against each subject, which parents see in the portal and which prints on the card. Print one student, a whole class, or every child in the school; parents can print or save their own copy as a PDF. Report cards are included on every plan.

Yes — the other side of the paper card. Your school keeps its own list of items (twelve to start with, taken from the printed card), writes its own wording for the marking levels, and chooses how often teachers mark: each week, each month, or once a term. A period nobody marked prints blank, never a zero. When you use it the report card prints as a folded booklet — grades on one leaf, behavior on the other — and when you don’t, it stays a single upright page.

Quite a lot, from the Reports page. A class list for a field trip or a fire drill — with your own tick columns ("Leaving school", "Leaving the museum", "Back at school") so a child is counted at every stop, plus blank car sheets a driver fills in. A paper attendance register for the month, and a whole-school attendance summary over any date range. A transcript covering every year a student attended. A certificate of thanks for a teacher at the end of the year. The whole-school conference schedule for the office door, and the volunteer roster for the notice board. Included in every school plan.

Yes — the grade averages report shows the class average for each subject, quarter by quarter, and you click a subject to see every student's own numbers underneath. Included in every school plan.

Yes — the grade trends chart draws a line per subject of a student's weekly averages over a rolling last-twelve-weeks window: every time you open it, the oldest week falls off the back and the current week is picked up, so it always shows the latest picture. A slide in one subject stands out weeks before it lands on a report card. Open it for one student or print a page per child; teachers see their own classroom, the office sees the school. Included in every school plan.

Go to Reports, open the End of year tab, and choose All your data, for Excel. You get one workbook with a sheet for each kind of record — students, enrolments, classes, subjects, every grade, attendance, behavior, the grades that appeared on report cards, teachers’ notes and your term dates. Every school year is in the same file, so you can compare this year with the last few.

The rows are deliberately flat rather than laid out as a report: the year, class, teacher, subject and student all sit on the same line as the mark, so any column can be used to filter or group. That is what lets you drop it straight into a PivotTable — or into whatever else you like to work in. A How to sheet walks you through building your first one.

It is an ordinary .xlsx file, so Excel, WPS Office, Numbers and Google Sheets all open it. School administrators can download it any time — you do not have to wait for year end. Included in every school plan.

Yes. The grade averages export as a proper table you can pivot — one row per student, subject and quarter, with the class and teacher on every row so you can slice by them. It is deliberately not a pre-formatted report: flat data is what you can pivot, filter and chart. The workbook includes a How to tab that walks you through building a PivotTable with slicers. Included in every school plan.

Yes. The office builds a conference night on a drag-and-drop board — a column per class — or lets it fill itself, and it never books the same family in two rooms at once. A family's conferences all fall on one evening, so nobody comes two nights running. Families are emailed their times with a link to confirm and add topics, and get an automatic reminder the night before. Included in every school plan.

Too big for one evening? Three or four hours is about all a teacher can manage in a night. If a classroom can't fit everyone in that time the board says so before you start, and offers to widen the evening, shorten each conference, or add a second evening — with every family still seen exactly once across the two.

Yes — the Volunteer Organizer runs recurring duty rosters like hot lunch or devotions, sharing the work fairly across your helpers and flagging any gaps in coverage. One-time rosters handle things like field-trip drivers and can count seats for carpools. Volunteers don't need accounts, and a no-login link lets them line up a substitute if they can't make it. Included in every school plan.

Yes — Lesson Plans is a plan book shaped like the paper one a teacher already keeps: her periods down the page, and in a room teaching several grades at once, a column for each grade. She writes what happens in a period on a day, with the subject and, if she wants one, a time. It is the one part of the program that costs extra — see the pricing question below.

A period is not tied to a subject: period 2 can be Reading on Monday and nothing on Tuesday, which is how a small school actually runs. Plans can repeat every week on that day or every school day, and changing one Tuesday leaves the rest of the term alone.

It is laid out the way the paper book is: the periods of the day down the side, Monday to Friday across the top, and a square where the two meet. If she likes a times column, she can label each period with her own text — “8:30”, “after recess” — and it sits where the times sit on paper. What it adds is the part paper cannot do: a subject entered once repeats itself down the year, and a week that worked can be laid down again.

That is the room it was built for. A square belongs to a grade and a period, so fourth grade’s first period and sixth grade’s first period are two separate squares and can be two different subjects. The day view puts every grade side by side in columns — what a substitute needs, and what the teacher wants when she is with one grade and the others are working.

One square per period, not one per day. She opens a square, chooses the subject, says it happens every school day, and saves — that is Monday to Friday done for that period, to the end of the year. Half a dozen periods and the shape of her whole year is on the screen before she has written a single lesson.

No, and this is the part that saves the year. When she puts a subject in a square she also says how often it happens: every school day for the subjects her room does daily, or every week on this day for the once-a-week ones — art on a Friday afternoon, the spelling test. She sets it once and the square fills itself in every week from then on. Changing one day afterwards leaves the rest of the year alone.

No, and nothing in the program depends on them. Periods are first, second, third — an order, not a timetable. The times are a label she can type if she wants to see them on the page, and she can leave them blank forever without anything complaining.

One click. Push this day slides everything from there forward onto the next real school day — and it reads the school calendar, so nothing lands on a holiday or a day the school is closed. A plan you pin, like a test with a date on it, is passed over and stays put; and if you pushed the wrong day, there is an undo.

Lock it. When a day is lost and she pushes the rest of the week forward, a locked plan stays on its date and the push steps over it. That is what you want for anything with a date of its own — a test, a program, a visiting speaker.

Each teacher’s plan book is her own, so a fixed slot like devotions or recess is a period in her own day setup — set up once at the start of the year, with a subject that repeats every school day, and it fills itself in from then on. Whole-school days that need no plan at all — holidays, closures, a snow day — come from the school calendar instead, and every plan book already knows to step over them.

Every square takes a short list of materials — the wall map, the jar of beans, thirty photocopies — meaning the things she has to find, not the books the children already carry. The week then prints as a gathering sheet, day by day, with a box to tick as each one turns up, so Friday afternoon is when she finds out the photocopier is empty rather than Monday morning. A substitute covering the class can print that sheet too.

Each subject has its own color, so a laid-out week can be read from across the room. On any single square she can override it — a Thursday English test in a different color from the rest of the English row — and only that day changes.

She saves it to the library, the school’s shelf of saved weeks, and drops it onto another week later. By default it brings back the shape — which subject sits in which period, at what time, in which grade column — and leaves every square empty for that week’s lessons; the arrangement is the part that took the afternoon, not the sentences. She can choose to save the lessons with it, which is how a worked-out week gets handed to another teacher. The shelf is the school’s, so weeks that suit her grades are listed first, and she is shown exactly what a week would lay down before it lays anything down — if a square is already taken, it asks rather than writing over her.

A new school year starts a fresh plan book, which is what you want — last year stays as it was taught. What carries over is the library: a week saved to the shelf stays on the shelf, and that is what it is for. It holds the pattern of a week — which subject sits in which period, in which grade, in what color — so next September she lays the pattern down and writes that year’s lessons into it.

Three layouts, because teachers don't agree on one: the week on a single sheet with periods down and days across; subjects across the top with days down the side, like the paper planners many already keep; or day by day in period order, which is the one to leave for a substitute. Each narrows to a single grade, a single subject, or both.

She searches the words. Every plan she has written is searchable, so “long division” brings back the weeks she taught it and she can open the one she wants. Useful in the moment she needs it, which is usually a year later.

Teachers who hold a license. A license is what opens Lesson Plans at all — with one a teacher sees every plan book in the school and writes her own, so two teachers of the same grade can compare a week and copy a plan from one book into the other. A teacher without a license does not have Lesson Plans in her menu.

Two exceptions. Your office can always read plans without a license. And a substitute assigned to cover a licensed teacher's class reads that class's plan for the days she is covering — the same step that lets her take attendance, so there is nothing extra to set up — and leaves a note about how the day actually went, which the teacher sees when she is back. She cannot change the plans, and she does not see the rest of the school's.

Parents never see lesson plans.

No. Lesson Plans is a staff tool: a teacher with a license, a substitute for the days she is covering, and the office. Parents have no way into it at all.

Nothing — the menu item is not there for them. A license is what opens the module, not merely what allows typing, so you buy one for each teacher who is going to keep plans. The office can always get in to administer it, and a substitute gets in for the days she is covering without using up a license.

To the teacher. The plans belong to the classroom. You hand a license to a person, and you can take it back and give it to someone else whenever you need to.

They stay where they are. A plan book belongs to the classroom, not to the person — so everything written for that room is still there, and the teacher taking the room over walks into a planned year rather than an empty one. Assign her the license and she picks up where it left off. The same goes for the school’s saved weeks: a teacher leaving never takes them with her.

She leaves a note on the day, and the teacher sees it on that day’s squares when she is back — what got finished, what did not, who was struggling. It is the substitute’s own note: only she can remove it, so the record of the day stands.

One for each teacher who needs to see lesson plans — reading takes a license just as writing does. It is per teacher rather than per classroom, so a teacher who takes two rooms needs one, not two. Substitutes covering a class do not need one, and neither does the office.

A license moves: take it back from a teacher who has left and give it to whoever replaces her. Nothing is lost when you do — the plans belong to the classroom, not to the teacher, so they stay exactly where they are and the new teacher picks up where the last one left off.

Open Settings → Lesson Plans → Licenses. When every license is in use, that card tells you the price per teacher for the year and how to add more for your school. New licenses are turned on as soon as payment reaches us, and they renew alongside the rest of your subscription.

Check first whether one is simply free: Take it back beside a teacher who has left returns her license to the pool straight away, and nothing of hers is deleted — the plans belong to the classroom.

By invitation only — from the office or their teacher. The parent gets an email with a private link to set their own password. Parents can never sign themselves up, which keeps a child's information locked to the right adults.

Their own children only: grades, the report card, an attendance calendar, the school events for their child, messages from teachers (with replies), and any permission slips awaiting a response. A parent with several children switches between them with one selector.

Yes. Teachers can email a parent, and the two can go back and forth in a shared message thread inside the portal.

A teacher sends a slip to the whole class or specific students, with a due date. Parents approve or decline online, with a signature and an optional note — no paper lost in a backpack. On the teacher's roster each child then carries a dot: green if it came back, red if it hasn't (naming the slip and its due date), and a red ✗ if the parent said no. So the teacher can catch the child before the bell — "your mum needs to reply to the zoo trip slip by Friday" — with the parent's phone and email right there on the same row.

Yes. When the school sends the schedule, each family gets an email and a card on their portal dashboard listing every child's time and teacher, with a link to confirm they're coming and note any topics to discuss.

Use the "Forgot password?" link on your sign-in page. You'll get a reset link by email that points at your own school's address. The link works for about 48 hours and only sets a new password. This works for every role.

An administrator adds the person's name and email from the Teachers & Staff page — no password is typed. The system emails them a private setup link to choose their own. If the email is lost, the link can be re-sent with one click while the account is still pending. The same page creates teacher, substitute, office and admin accounts alike.

Yes. Every staff member carries the job title your school uses — Principal, Secretary, Board Member, Office Manager — separately from what their account can do. A principal or board member is usually a full admin; an office account runs enrollment, conferences, volunteers and reports while leaving staff management, billing and closing the year to the admin. Office and admin accounts never count against your plan's teacher seats.

No. Every school lives at its own web address with its own separate data. Nobody at one school can ever see another school's students.

Yes. On the Teachers page, View As signs an administrator in as that teacher — their dashboard, gradebook and class, exactly as they see it — with a banner showing the whole time. Exit View As brings you straight back. It is the quickest way to sort out a “my screen doesn’t show…” call.

A parent's email is their login. The safest path is for the parent to be re-invited to the new email address, or to use the forgot-password flow, rather than an admin editing it in a way that could lock them out. The documentation walks through the exact steps.

A wizard makes sure nothing is lost first: download a backup, optionally export grades, print all report cards, then close. Closing promotes every student a grade and graduates the top class. The old year is archived, never deleted — and from that moment it is view-only, so a past report card reads the same forever no matter what you change this year.

No, and that is deliberate — closing the books is the point. A closed year can be read, printed and reported on forever, but its grades, attendance, comments and behavior marks can’t be changed. Your window for corrections is the weeks before you close: report cards go home, parents come back with questions, you fix what needs fixing, then you close.

Yes. A new year begins with a copy of your current weights and letter-grade scale, and the two are independent from then on. A teacher who marks differently this year changes it for this year, and last year’s report cards stay exactly as they printed.

Backups run automatically every night, so nobody has to remember. You can also download a full snapshot any time — and the year-end wizard has you take one before anything changes.

Yes. In spring, the "Prepare Next Year" wizard clones this year's classes, subjects, terms and grading setup as a draft you can adjust for teacher and class changes — all without touching the current year.

$22 per student, per year, with a $220/yr minimum per school. Teachers, substitutes and aides are free and unlimited; the bill simply follows your enrollment at each renewal. The price you buy at is locked for the school year you buy in: if our price drops later there's no refund, and if it goes up we won't come back and ask for more. A single homeschooling family has its own flat plan at $65 a year. The pricing page has a slider for your exact size. Every feature is included at that price except Lesson Plans, which is optional and priced separately.

$23 per teacher, per year, on top of the per-student price — one license for each teacher who uses it. A license is what opens Lesson Plans, to read as much as to write, so a school licenses the teachers who need plans in front of them and pays nothing for the rest. A school with eight teachers where three keep plan books and the others never open them pays for three.

Worth saying plainly, because it changes who is paying: most teachers already buy a plan book out of their own pocket every year, and a decent one with the bits that go with it runs well past this unless they catch a sale at the right moment. This puts that cost on the school, where it belongs — and the school pays less for it than the teacher was.

Two people are never charged for: your office, and a substitute covering a licensed teacher's class. You can add it at sign-up or later, and moving a license from a teacher who leaves to one who arrives costs nothing.

No — parent accounts and staff accounts (teachers, substitutes, aides) are unlimited and never counted. Pricing is based only on students.

The school plan includes everything — conference scheduling, the Volunteer Organizer, Reports & printables, the gradebook, attendance, report cards, the parent portal, the shared calendar, permission slips, enrollment and the whole-school year report. There is no bigger plan to upgrade to. The single exception is Lesson Plans, an optional add-on charged per teacher who uses it — a school that doesn't want it never pays for it. The homeschool plan skips the whole-school modules (conferences, volunteers, the Reports page), since they're built for a school community.

Plan & Billing, in the school-admin menu, shows your plan, the student count you are billed for and your renewal date, and opens a secure billing portal to change the card. Teachers are free, and the price follows your enrollment automatically.