Roll Call: daily check-in & check-out

Most co-ops track attendance per class — a teacher marks who showed up to their specific class period. Roll Call is different: it's a single, org-wide board for marking when each student arrived and left for the day, the way a front desk sign-in sheet works. It's built for co-ops and enrichment programs that run as one continuous day rather than à la carte class periods.

Roll Call and per-class attendance can both be on at the same time, and marking a student present, absent, or excused in Roll Call automatically marks them the same way in every class they're enrolled in that meets that day — so a teacher doesn't have to re-mark someone the front desk already checked in. A teacher who marks their own class's attendance by hand always has the final say: once a teacher sets a student's status for their class, Roll Call won't overwrite it, even if the student is later checked in or out again.

This adds Roll Call to the sidebar for owners and admins. Families don't see a Roll Call page — it's a staff tool.

Below it is Teachers can use roll call too. Turn it on if your teachers help work the check-in desk; leave it off if check-in is a front-desk job and you'd rather the whole board stayed with your admins. Teachers aren't notified either way — where it's off, the page simply isn't in their sidebar. Their own per-class attendance is a separate thing and they keep it regardless.

Once it's on, the View button above the list controls how the board reads: whether it groups families or runs as one flat A–Z list, whether names read “Ivy Zeller” or “Zeller, Ivy”, and whether the photo circle shows. Those three are saved to your own account and follow you between devices. Checking parents in is the one setting there that applies to the whole co-op.

Open Roll Call in the sidebar. Every enrolled student for the day appears in one of two views at the top: Not arrived and Here. Click either card to switch which group you're looking at.

Each student row has one main action that does the obvious next thing:

For a student who isn't going to arrive that day, open the row's menu and choose Mark absent or Mark excused instead of leaving them sitting in Not Arrived all day.

Students are grouped by family so siblings show up together, unless you pick one of the ungrouped orders under View (see How the board looks). When a family has two or more people (kids and/or parents) still in Not Arrived, a Check in all button appears on that family's group header — one tap checks in everyone still missing from that family at once, which is handy for a morning drop-off line.

Each family's parents and guardians show up in the same card as their kids, tagged with a Parent badge, and check in and out the same way a student does. Outside of that one shared bulk button, a parent's status is completely independent of their children's: checking a parent in or out on their own row never changes whether their kids are marked present, and checking a kid in or out never touches the parent. That matters when a parent or teacher is home sick but their kids still get dropped off by someone else: their own row can stay Not Arrived all day without holding up their children's check-in.

Under View, Check parents in too hides parent/guardian rows entirely if your co-op only wants to track students. It's on by default. Turning it off also drops parents out of the Check in all bulk action, and unlike the other settings in that panel it applies to everyone staffing the board, not just your own view.

Use the search box to jump straight to one person by name — searching switches to a flat list instead of grouped-by-family, which is quicker when you just need one name. It searches whoever the board is showing, so when parents are turned on you can look one up by name instead of hunting for their family's card.

The View button in the toolbar opens the board's display settings. Most of what's in there is yours alone: it saves to your account, so it follows you to whichever device you work check-in from and doesn't change what anyone else sees. Everything applies the moment you click it, and there's no Save button, so you can change your mind partway through a morning.

Order

Three ways to arrange the board, depending on who is reading it:

• Last name keeps the family cards and puts them in A–Z order by surname. This is what a board uses until someone changes it.
• Last name, no grouping drops the family cards for one flat list of everyone the board is showing, students and parents together, A–Z by surname.
• First name, no grouping is that same flat list sorted by first name instead. It's the one to use on a tablet by the door, because a child scanning for their own name is looking for their first name.

Names

Switches every name on the board between Ivy Zeller and Zeller, Ivy. A student with no last name on file reads as their first name on its own in either setting, never with a stray comma.

Show photos

The circle beside each name. Turning it off fits more rows on the screen, which helps on a laptop at a busy front desk.

Roll Call always opens on today by default. Use the date field next to the search box to step back to a previous day and review who was checked in, when they arrived, and when they left. You can't move the date forward past today — there's nothing to check in for a day that hasn't happened yet.

Each day has its own small notes log above the board — use it to leave a short, time-stamped note for whoever's at the front desk later that day or reviewing the day afterward (a late pickup, a note from a parent, anything that doesn't belong on one specific student's row). Notes are attributed to whoever posted them.

Families can list adults (a grandparent, a family friend, anyone besides the parents themselves) who are allowed to pick their kids up from co-op. If a family has any on file, their name and phone number show right on the family's card in Roll Call, under a Pickup label, so whoever is staffing check-out can confirm the person collecting a student is on the list without having to ask the parents directly.

Families manage this list themselves from My Profile, under Authorized for pickup. It applies to all of their children at once (there's no per-student list), and a contact can also be flagged as an emergency contact at the same time, since the two lists often overlap.

If the person running check-out changes from week to week, they won't know which students are allowed to leave on their own. Parents can flag those children themselves from My Profile, under Self check-out (the card appears once your co-op uses Roll Call and the family has a child on file). Roll Call then shows a Self check-out badge next to that student on the board and on the kiosk.

Admins can set it too, for families that don't sign in: open the family in Families, choose Edit family, edit the student and tick Can check themselves out. Every change, by a parent or an admin, is recorded in the audit log.

The badge is a heads-up for staff, nothing more. It doesn't block or change check-out: you still tap Check out as usual. A child with no badge hasn't been flagged, so check with the family if you're unsure.

Many co-ops leave a tablet by the door and let parents and kids tap their own names. Left as the full Roll Call page, that tablet also offers the date picker, the notes panel, the View settings, and the whole sidebar, and people tap them. Kiosk mode fixes that: it is the same board with everything else taken away, and only a PIN brings the dashboard back.

While locked, the tablet shows only today: the search box, the Not arrived and Here tallies, the family cards with their Check in and Check out buttons, and Check in all. There is no date picker, no notes, no View panel, and no row menu for marking someone absent or excused. Those stay on the full board for staff.

The lock belongs to the browser, not to the page. Typing a dashboard address, using the back button, or following a bookmark all land straight back on the check-in screen until someone unlocks it with the PIN. The lock survives a page reload and stays on for up to 30 days, and the screen refreshes itself every half minute, so a check-in made at the front desk shows up on the tablet by the door, and a tablet left running moves itself to the next day at midnight so Tuesday's arrivals never land on Monday's sheet. If the staff login on the tablet ever expires, the tablet sends itself to the sign-in page and returns to the locked screen once someone signs in.

If someone signs in on the locked tablet with an account that can't use Roll Call at your co-op, they see a short notice instead of the board, with the same PIN unlock and a sign-out button. The PIN is what unlocks the device, whoever is signed in.

Forgot the PIN? An admin can set a new one in Settings from any other device. Removing the PIN entirely means the next Kiosk mode tap asks for a fresh one, and releases a locked tablet the next time someone taps Exit on it.