a. Small and mid-sized schools
b. Schools looking to improve their communications system
c. Schools with limited budgets

Parents are extremely busy and constantly struggling to be on top of their child’s activities in schools. They use Post It Notes, filled–to-capacity Calendars, and To Do Lists as reminders.

SchoolCues solves the problem by combining paper and electronic methods with Auto Reminders by automatically sending alerts days before or on any project due date or school activity that requires their attention.

Many teachers post lesson plans, class room activities, test schedules, future trips, upcoming classroom meetings and more on the web. Parents are directed to go to websites to view assignments and other events in a school or a class. The reality is parents do not have the time to go to yet another website to look for information.

SchoolCues solves this problem by integrating the Class/Teacher Update module into a unified system where a teacher can easily post homework assignments, class announcements, and more within minutes and is delivered directly to a parent’s inbox. The parent also has the option of viewing it in a secure site along with all the other relevant content.

In order to maintain a positive and productive teacher-student work environment in classrooms and on school premises, it is necessary to have a safe and orderly school environment. Research indicates that there is a strong link between academic achievement and student behavior. Success in math, reading, science, and social science is directly tied to major and minor transgressions in school. Fewer behavior problems lead to improved student learning and achievement. Most school incident and accident reports are paper based and parents often toss them after a cursory look. This is a huge investment in paper and time for the schools to detail the incident and give a copy of it to the parent.

The Incident / Accident report module in SchoolCues makes it easy for the teacher and the administrator to create reports of incidents and accidents and categorize them based on the type. It also updates the parent on the incident/accident and requires the parent to acknowledge the report if required.

Meal planning for a busy family can be one of the most challenging tasks on a To Do list. Parents are concerned about nutrition, allergies and taste preferences. Having lunch and snack calendars at their fingertips helps answer the constant inquiry “what are we eating today?”

The Snack & Lunch Menu Calendar provides a quick and easy way to view your child's school breakfast/lunch & snack menus. This helps parents be informed about the wellness and school nutrition selections for their children.

Teachers and administrators send messages to parents via a child’s back pack as a paper note or by way of email. A downside of this form of communication is that paper notes easily get lost in transit and emails are easily overlooked in a crowded in box.

SchoolCues has a conveniently designed Messages module that is integrated with the newsletters and the Class teachers Module that allows a teacher to easily send messages and notes to parents.

Administrators spend an enormous amount of time constructing newsletters. Unfortunately, however they are often time consuming to create and editing existing contacts in their mailing list is a challenge. Moreover, over 75% of the parents feel that the newsletters are not relevant to them or their child and as a result, most school newsletters go unread. Schools also spend a lot of time and money generating paper based newsletters, which are often relegated to a child’s back pack, refrigerator door, or the trash can, defeating the primary purpose of a newsletter. In other instances, parents do not have the time to go to a school website to read a newsletter. There is also the high possibility that a school newsletter will simply get lost in a sea of emails the parent is wading through. If the parent sees nothing relevant or important in the subject or the sender field in the few minutes they have over their morning coffee break, it is likely to be deleted to make time for other important emails.

SchoolCues solves the newsletter challenges by facilitating quick and easy information delivery through an efficient contact list management system. The user can easily add and delete contacts from their contact lists. The newsletter module is extremely simple to use and disseminate content to the parents. School branded templates help maintain the school’s relevancy to the parents. It saves paper costs to the school and most importantly, the newsletters are available anytime anywhere for the parent to access and read. The parent has the option of either receiving it by email or simply viewing it at a securely on SchoolCues web portal or on SchoolCues mobile app.

Permission slips are required by law in many places in order for an organization to take a student on a trip. Generally, parents or legal guardians must give permission for their child to be transported by another adult. Most permission slips are sent through the child’s back pack and are paper based. That can often result in the permission slip being delayed or misplaced or the parent never getting to know about it. There is an enormous amount of paper wastage for the school on account of creating and managing the permission slip process by the teacher or the administrator.

SchoolCues introduces online permission slips where the parent can digitally sign their permission online as long as the school gives permission to the parent. Or the parent can print out the permission slip form, sign it and hand it to the school. The permission slips are pore-created templates that a school teacher or administrator can easily download and send to a parent for approval. This saves the school time and money and makes the process easier to manage.

Parent/Teacher Conferences are time consuming to set up and manage for teachers and administrators. Parents are busier than ever and scheduling meetings with teachers I becoming increasingly challenging. In most schools, they are a manual process, using paper or email. Parents have limited choices in their preferences for slots. Timing conflicts for parents increases the burden on teachers and administrators to constantly change the appointment times. Parents require constant reminders and unread PTC notices in children’s back packs delay a timely response from parents.

SchoolCues automates the scheduling process for busy teachers, administrators and parents. Parents have full visibility of all available meeting times for all their children’s teachers with whom they need to schedule a conference. The online scheduling process is quick and easy for the parent who also receives email confirmations and automatic reminders. This eliminates paperwork and back and forth email and saves set up time for teachers. The scheduler also takes into account multiple siblings across classes. It’s available anytime – anywhere within a secure environment. The system also prevents scheduling errors and ensures that conflicting appointments cannot be made.

Every school has a calendar filled with events where parents need to RSVP and/or sign up for school meetings, potlucks, plays, community meetings, fund raising events etc. This process is predominantly done via email or paper where email is exchanged back and forth or schools use a one of the solutions available on the web. Many times, the hosts often do not receive responses to their invitations. Therefore, hosts can't tell how many plan to attend the event or even if an RSVP is clearly requested. An incomplete list of respondents can cause numerous problems for a host including difficulty in planning the right quantities, issues relating to minimum guarantees with events, uncertainty and difficulties in planning appropriate seating among other things.

SchoolCues introduces the RSVP & Sign Up module which helps the teacher create a quick and easy custom RSVP and Sign up form online that is automatically sent to the parents with a few clicks. Parents can easily enter the details by the date specified along with the details requested. This helps the organizer more efficiently manage the process.

School Calendars are mostly web based, paper based or PDF files in the form of static calendars which are not specific to a child. They are usually an all-encompassing calendar for the whole school. In order to make it truly relevant to a parent, calendars must be specific to the activities of their child.

The SchoolCues calendar is specific to YOUR child and designed by activity, by class and by child. This makes it much more relevant and user friendly for a parent to make plans based on their child’s schedule any day of the week or the month.

The SchoolCues Sign Up solution makes it relatively simple to create and manage group sign up lists using simple wizards. Sign Ups are the same as RSVP & Sign-ups but without the need for an RSVP. For example, the school may be looking for volunteers to sign up for an activity. Signups can be public or private and parents get automatic reminders.

Schools require a simple parental notification system that’s quick and easy to implement and use. The traditional alert services were originally built to send recorded voice messages - not text messages. In addition to minimum service fees and initial setup and integration expenses, most schools can expect to pay approximately $3-$5 / student / year for the notification system. Even with that cost, schools still experience challenges in setting up these notification systems: expensive and resource intensive set up and management process, time drains to get parents enrolled, parents requiring just text messages, difficulty opting in and opting out of the system etc. Also, email alerts rarely completely solve the problem of notifying parents due to speed and delivery issues and crowded inboxes. Parents require quick alerts & reminders.

The TextCues module in the SchoolCues platform has a very simple interface with a quick and easy set up. It can send unlimited group texts and individual text messages in a few seconds. The need for paper & phone reminders is eliminated and helps maintain accurate communication logs of who the text messages have been sent to. The receiver can easily update their settings if their number changes.

We offer the lowest cost for designing custom and semi-custom websites including hosting services in the market. Our websites are designed to provide schools a branded look and feel with multi functional interactive components. We provide rich graphics and content, with easy and intuitive navigation for our audience. Our website costs including design, execution and annual support is typically in the ball park of $1500 - $3000 and never more. Our excellent customer service is included as part of any contract.

We offer managed hosting, maintenance and content management services at the lowest price for the schools market. Our stellar customer service offers a 24 hour turn around for most requests for updates and changes to the site. Our state of the art servers have a > 99% uptime. Our web and email services are fully protected with the latest spam and virus filters. Our hosting and maintenance plan start from $25.00 per month and is competitively priced for larger scale projects.