EOY: School Website & Attendance Updates

As the school year winds down, it’s the perfect time to take a step back and make sure everything is ready for a smooth transition into the next year.

In this working group, we focused on two key areas that can make a big difference for your team: keeping your website up to date and preparing attendance data for end-of-year reporting. Both play an important role in how your school communicates, operates, and prepares for what’s ahead.

Let’s walk through some of the key takeaways.

Your website is often the first impression families have of your school—and for current families, it’s a daily resource.

As you prepare for the upcoming school year, it's important to take time to review and update key areas:

Time-sensitive information to check for:

• Outdated announcements or events
• Archive Board Meeting minutes and newsletters
• Faculty / staff listings and contact information
• Verify links are working properly
• Update pictures and video as needed

Even small updates can go a long way in helping families find accurate, relevant information and stay engaged with your school through your site.

How to slice-and-dice the task:

Instead of trying to overhaul everything at once, focus on:

• Removing outdated content
• Updating high-traffic pages
• Making sure key information is easy to find

Accuracy for high-traffic pages matters more than perfection.

If you use any forms on your website, it's important to note this new update, designed to help you keep track of new potential families and ultimately increase enrollment.

New Features

• Form submissions are now easier to view and search
• You can “tag” forms to help identify marketing leads
• Filter and view forms by tag
• Edit information directly on form submissions

Form Leads help marketing teams boost enrollment by identifying and following up with families who express interest through forms on your website—such as your Contact Us page or campaign landing pages from platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, or Pinterest.

How to mark a form submission as a lead:

• When someone submits a form on your website, you can review the submission under Users / Forms
• If the submission represents a potential lead, simply tag it as a lead
• Once tagged, it will appear in Lottery / Leads tab, where you can manage follow-up

How to follow up with the lead:

• See which form the family submitted
• Track every outreach attempt (email, text, call, or mail) along with the contact date
• Monitor their progress through the application process (e.g., Created Account, Started Application, Submitted Application)

Attendance reporting may feel overwhelming — especially if you wait until the last minute.

This session emphasized some of the tools in Frogtummy Attendance that help smooth the process of taking and reporting attendance and reduce the risk of making errors.

Key Tasks

• For state student withdrawal requirements, identify students with 10 or more consecutive days of absence
  You can view consecutive absences in the Reports tab of Frogtummy Attendance. We recommend searching for "5" consecutive days instead of "10" consecutive days — the reason is, if a teacher misses recording an absence by mistake, you can find patterns of "5" and "5" consecutive days very close to each other that might need to be joined together, indicating 10 or more consecutive missed days, but the teacher just missed recording one of the days in between.
• Clean up Absence (X) data with the "automatic unexcuse" setting
  For parents who do not respond to their student's absence notice, you can configure those absences to be marked "unexcused" after a specific number of days. For example, if a parent does not excuse or deny an absence within 10 days, mark the absence unexcused. To do this, go to Attendance / Settings / District Settings / Attendance, then enter the number of days you will allow for a parent to respond before marking the absence as unexcused. This cleans up your Absent (X) data and helps monitor unexcused absences.
• Clean up unused SIS Attendance codes
  In your SIS, verify that codes properly mark students as present or absent. In Frogtummy, turn off any codes you aren’t using to keep attendance data clean.
• Automatically send absence reason codes to your SIS
  You can make it so that excuses an absence, you can map the absence reason to a SIS attendance code, and we will automatically update your SIS with that code. For example, if a parent selects "Vacation" and you map that to "V", we will update your SIS with V as the reason for absence. Saves you TONS of time and phone calls. To map your absence reason codes to an attendance code, go to Attendance / Settings / Attendance Approval Reasons.

Can my website have "Online Chat"?

Yes. Online Chat can easily be added to your school website. There are free third-party sites that offer this service, such as Tawk.to. If you create an account with a chat service and send your information to us, we can add it to your website. Some schools have the button on every page, while some choose to only have it on the Enrollment page and parent portal.

How do I change an attendance status that was recorded for a student?

To change an attendance status already recorded for a student — such as removing an excusal — go to the main attendance grid, find the student, and click on the attendance code you'd like to change. Select the new code, and it will be sent to Aspire and marked in the log. This saves you time and logins!

How do I change the reasons a parent can excuse an absence?

You can customize the reasons a parent can choose from when excusing an absence. Go to Settings / Absence Approval Reasons, then specify the reasons you wish to show in the drop-down. For each reason, you can map it to a SIS attendance code; when the parent selects that reason, the code is automatically marked in your SIS. Save time and effort!

Do teachers have a Frogtummy account?

Yes! Staff can have a Frogtummy account and log in just as families do. Depending on the modules your school has, teachers can pay for lunch, take attendance, and now even manage their sign-ups (e.g., parent-teacher conferences).