Dismissal Tracker — Getting Started

What is the Dismissal Tracker?

The Dismissal Tracker is a school-safety tool that gives your staff a clear, real-time picture of how every active student is getting home each day. Instead of relying on paper notes, phone calls, or institutional memory, every dismissal plan lives in one place — visible to the right people, updated the moment something changes.

Key capabilities:

• See at a glance which students have a confirmed dismissal plan and which ones are still “missing” a plan for the day
• Automatically pull in absence data and bus route assignments 
• Allow parents and guardians to set or update their child’s default dismissal plan directly from their phone
• Manage after-school programs with day-specific enrollment
• Review a full audit history of every change, including who made it and when
• Export the student roster with dismissal information as a CSV

Who Can Use the Dismissal Tracker?

The feature must be enabled for your school. If you do not see the Dismissal Tracker in the navigation, contact your district administrator.

Admin or staff members with dismissal tracker privileges can:

• View, set, and edit dismissal plans for any student
• Manage programs and long-term defaults
• Review history and calendar summaries
• Message parents of students whose dismissal plan is missing

Parents with access see a page specific to their child. From there they can:

• Set or update a long-term default dismissal plan (e.g., “My child always rides the bus”)
• Add a one-time or short-term change for specific dates (e.g., “Grandma is picking them up on Friday”)
• View a monthly calendar of their child’s dismissal history

Note: Parent editing must be enabled by the school.

Accessing the Dismissal Tracker

For Staff

Navigate to Dismissal in the main navigation, then select your school. You will land on the Dashboard tab, which shows a real-time breakdown of your school’s current dismissal status.

For Parents

Parents can access the Dismissal Tracker from the main navigation when logged in, or via a direct link sent by the school. Parents may also receive a “missing dismissal plan” message from the school — clicking the link in that message will take them directly to a setup page for their child.

What Gets Set Automatically

Two common dismissal scenarios require zero manual entry from staff:

Absences

When a student is marked absent in the attendance system, the Dismissal Tracker picks that up in real time. The student’s dismissal type will automatically show as Absence for that day — there is nothing for staff to do. Absences always override any other plan (long-term default, temporary override, or program enrollment) and cannot be manually set. If the absence is corrected during the day, the student’s normal plan resumes automatically.

Bus Routes

For schools with an active bus route integration, bus assignments are imported automatically on a scheduled basis. Each student gets a long-term bus default with their specific route number — no manual setup needed. The system will not overwrite a bus assignment that was manually set by a staff member or guardian, so human decisions always take priority over the auto-import. If your school is not connected to the bus integration, bus assignments must be set manually as a long-term default.

After-School Programs

If your school runs after-school programs (care, clubs, tutoring, sports, etc.), the Programs feature lets you define each activity, set which days of the week it runs, and enroll students — choosing specific days per student. For example, a student can be enrolled in an after-school care program that runs Mon–Fri but only attend on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

See Article 2: Programs — Setup and Day Selection for a complete walkthrough.

A Quick Look at the Interface (Staff View)

When you open the Dismissal Tracker dashboard, you will see a row of tabs across the top:

Each of these tabs is covered in detail in Article 4: Dashboard Tabs Explained.

Dismissal Types at a Glance

Every student is assigned one of the following dismissal types for a given day: