Round Table Q&A

In this working group, we held an engaging discussion led by participant questions. If you weren't able to join us, feel free to read the Q&A below or watch the recording. 

Have questions of your own? Frogtummy is here for you! You can email us or schedule an individual call for more involved discussion! Email us at support@frogtummy.com or submit a support ticket.

myCarpool: How to show a map of carpool participants to prospective families?

Administrators can view the active carpool map on their parent portal at any time, which is great for demos to new families.

Parents can only view carpool if two conditions exist: 1 ) they have one or more students enrolled at the school and 2) they have opted in to carpool. 

Back Office: How to know if our school gets an SMS?

Schools can choose to receive alerts that an SMS has been received by the school two ways:

• Get a text message when an SMS is received: To receive a text message when someone replies to an SMS, go to Settings / District Settings / Notifications / Mobile number(s) to notify when a text is received. This can be helpful when the school has an office cell phone, but may be invasive if using your own personal phone. 
• Get an email when an SMS is received: To receive an email when someone replies to an SMS, go to Settings / District Settings / Notifications / Email addresse(s) to notify when a text is received.

In addition to the above, a red dot appears on the SMS tab for unread messages. This helps to alert users to new, unread messages without relying on email or mobile notices.

myAttendance: Can I receive an alert when a parent responds that their student was not absent?

Yes! When a parent responds that their student was not absent, a pink highlight appears on the attendance status for the student on that day. Additionally, you can receive an email by going to myAttendance / Settings / Campus Notices by Grade / Email if parent marks student not absent.

myAttendance has powerful features for absence management, including:

• Limit the number of absences a parent is allowed to excuse by month, term and year.
• Create your own custom reasons that a parent can give for their student's absence — parents specify the reason when they excuse their student's absence.
• Map absence reasons to Aspire codes, such as V for Vacation.
• Notify parents as they 1) approach and 2) reach absence limits. After the limit is reached, parents must contact the school to excuse further absences.
• Automatically mark an absence as "unexcused" if the parent does not respond within a set number of days.
• Generate reports to identify students with frequent absences or tardies. Send targeted messages using templates.

These features aim to prevent abuse, such as parents excusing too many absences, and to foster communication between families and schools regarding student attendance.

myInbox: What if I accidentally delete an upcoming message? Can I recover it?

If you delete an upcoming message, an SMS reply, or a lottery application and want to get it back, in a future release, we will be adding a "retrieve from trash" feature to allow recovery of any unintentionally deleted items.

myLottery: Is there a way to distinguish returning students from new students during the application process?

One option is to add a question to the application, though this could reduce conversions as too many questions can hinder families from completing the application. If the question only applies to a few students, this may not be a good idea.

You could also add a statement on the application that if you are a returning student, you must follow certain instructions.

myLottery: What does "SIS Records Not Found in Lottery" refer to?

SIS Records Not Found in Lottery: Aspire registrations that have no matching lottery application. This can result from parents registering directly in Aspire without filling out a lottery application, or returning students with a new Aspire ID.

Application Mismatches: Our algorithm attempts to match registrations in Aspire with applicants in the lottery database. A positive match is based on demographic information, such as first name, last name, birth date, etc. In most cases, we can automatically match about 90-95% of records, saving you tons of time. If our system finds a potential match but with a slight discrepancy, such as first name is spelled differently, birth date is off, etc., the application is flagged for manual review and staff can correct data. Once the data is corrected, usually by contacting the family and finding out which version of the data is correct, the application will once again qualify for automatic matching.

IMPORTANT: You must reconcile the above records before running lotteries to prevent unintentional enrollments. 

myLottery: On the Run Lottery tab, why does "red" show if my School Capacity is "0"?

The School Capacity field will turn red if set to "0" — because we wish to emphasize the importance of listing capacity numbers for each grade. Our algorithm uses school capacity to help you determine how many seats to offer, after consideration of offers made, pending responses, accepted offers, and enrolled students. With these values, you can judge how many additional offers to make based on expected follow-through rates. 

You can control offers to make per grade by adjusting the corresponding columns, allowing for conservative or aggressive enrollment strategies. Adjusting capacity numbers mid-year affects all calculations.

myPayment: How can users pay varying amounts for a single product, such as a donation?

myPayment has flexible payment widgets that can be used to collect any payment amount, such as for donations, building rental or concessions. You can configure preset amounts as well, so users can easily select common amounts such as for donations.

Variable payment widgets are located in myWebsite / Add Block / myPayment.

Shops can be shared via direct link or used directly by office staff to process payments as needed.