SchoolCal’s mission, rebrand, and future
Summary
We’re doubling down on our goal to build valuable software that helps you coordinate staff, students, resources and spaces. We have a new brand that visually reinforces what we do (connect disparate sources of data together) and how we feel about it (energetic and optimistic). We “moved” from schoolcal.co to schoolcal.com. And we have plans for new features and products.
Doubling down on our goal
School operations are complex. Friction exists at each turn, and “finding availability” is exhausting due to factors like:
- rotating cycle days
- rotating blocks
- per-division schedule sets
- special schedules
- school-wide events
- cross-divisional teachers
- field trips
- coverage/subs
- athletic events/dismissals
- dept meetings
- space/resource booking
- and more…
Contributing to the friction… teachers can’t keep their calendars updated with their availability because they’re so busy and things change so much (see list above).
When calendars live in separate worlds, so does your school.
4 years ago, we launched SchoolCal to solve that problem. We partnered with 11 founding schools (thank you!) to build a powerful, but easy-to-manage solution that lets you connect your sync event data from your SIS to staff and student calendars. It needed to give you control over what you sync, and who you sync it with. And most importantly, it should “just work”. No ongoing maintenance, steep learning curve, or expensive pricing.
Since then, SchoolCal has helped hundreds of schools save thousands of hours and found that connecting calendars has helped connect the school. Administrators don’t waste time playing schedule tag, teachers can observe each other's classes more often, students can take ownership of their schedules, and parents have greater visibility into school life. Administrators can book meetings and rooms in seconds, and tech leaders have provided a tool for their entire community to make operations easier.
Our goal is to build valuable software that helps you schedule and coordinate staff, students, and spaces. And today, we wanted to share a few ways we’re doubling down on that with a new brand, a new “home”, and new solutions.
New brand: sun rays + data rays
Our new brand is a visual representation of what we do, and how we feel about it.
Fundamentally, SchoolCal brings together multiple sources of disparate data and syncs it to a location that helps coordinate and connect your school. The incoming rays are arrows coming together at a centralized location, recognizing that SchoolCal is a central spot to integrate school operational data. The rays going out represent practical and helpful information to each of your users to help them run/plan/manage their very full days.
This is core to what we do both now, and in the future.
But we wanted a brand that went beyond the technical idea of syncing. We love what we do, and who we do it for. And we wanted something that reflected that.
The rising sun represents our optimism, energy, and excitement for our work and goal - and feels like it matches with you, the people we get to work with. The sun also represents a new day, and with each new day, SchoolCal (hopefully!) helps you to plan, manage and coordinate your day and keep things running smoothly.
So in the next event you attend, look for our “sun rays and data rays” and say “hi!”.
New domain: find us at schoolcal.com
We’ve officially moved from schoolcal.co to schoolcal.com. The old app login and website will automatically redirect, so none of your links, bookmarks, or shortcuts will break. There also won’t be any interruption or changes in the syncing process.
This also means we have new email addresses. You can still email us at the old addresses (e.g. support@schoolcal.co), but you’ll see all new emails and replies from the new address (e.g. support@schoolcal.com).
New products: early plans & ideas
Our goal is to build valuable software that helps you schedule and coordinate staff, students, and spaces. Our first product did that by syncing SIS event data to staff, student and room calendars. We’ll continue to improve, simplify, and refine that as we have for the past few years.
But we’ve also identified other sources of “calendar chaos” your school faces, and have early plans for a new product or two that will help solve it. We hope to share more on that later, but if you’d like to get a first look and help shape it, you can reach out to aaron@schoolcal.com and we’ll share more details with you.
New school year
That’s it for our news. As we look at the beginning of a new school year, we just wanted to say “thank you” for all your support these past few years. We’re more excited than ever about building solutions that “just work”, and bring loads of value to your school. And we wouldn’t be where we are without all of you.