Charter School Software · For charter schools · Free to start · 2026
One platform for the charter school that answers to an authorizer, a board, and its families — with no district back office behind it.
A charter runs a public role on a small team’s budget: it admits by its own process, is governed by its own board, and answers to an authorizer, all at once, usually without a district office to lean on. Charterschool.software is the software that covers what a charter would otherwise stitch together itself — student records, a staff and family directory, the yearbook and school paper, family updates, fundraising, and picture day — on one platform, free to start.
Free to start. No contract required.
The charter reality this is built for
Three obligations at once, usually with one small team to cover them
A charter school is a public school that runs independently: it answers to an AUTHORIZER for its accountability, to its own BOARD for governance, and to its families for the day-to-day — and it typically does all three without a district central office standing behind it. That combination is what makes charter operations genuinely different from a district school’s back office, and it is also what makes five disconnected subscriptions a real cost, not just an inconvenience: a small team re-entering the same roster into five tools is time and budget a charter does not have spare.
Charterschool.software is built around that shape: one roster feeds records, the directory, ID cards, publications, and picture day, so the back office a charter needs does not require the department a district has. Where a charter needs the sharper, charter-specific mechanisms — a verifiable oversubscribed-enrollment lottery, or open-meeting board governance with named roll-call votes — those live at charterschool.network; this page is the day-to-day operating layer underneath.
What is built and what is early access
Six pieces of the charter back office, on one platform
Every capability is labelled honestly: Built means it is live today. Early access means the piece is being finished and is not sold as live yet.
Student records & a staff/family directory — no district back office required
Enrollment, the roster, and a staff and family directory live in one system instead of a stack of spreadsheets a small office has to keep in sync by hand. An ID-card pipeline runs off the same roster, so badges for students and staff come from data you already entered once. A charter does not need a district mainframe behind it to keep clean records. Built & live today
One free editor for the yearbook, the school paper, and a public online edition
The yearbook, the school newspaper, and a public online edition all come from one editor with version history, your own fonts, and a print-preflight check that refuses to send a broken job to the printer. A small team, or a single volunteer, can run all three publications without three separate tools to learn. Built & live today
Online enrollment & the student-records tier
Families apply and register online, and a seated student flows straight into the records tier: roster, transcripts, and the directory update from the same intake instead of a second round of data entry. This is the shared enrollment-and-records module every charter on the platform gets; when a charter is oversubscribed and needs a verifiable, offline-checkable lottery, that specific mechanism is charterschool.network’s page, not duplicated here. Built & live today
Fundraising that keeps the whole gift, and a clean money trail
Run a fundraiser where the platform takes none of the gift — card-processing fees still apply, but the platform does not clip a percentage. Every gift is tracked in plain view, which is exactly the kind of clean, exportable money trail a board or an authorizer conversation is easier with. Built & live today
Picture day, with a parent store your school keeps the revenue on
Portraits run through a consent-gated pipeline, with a parent storefront priced above a code-enforced cost floor so nothing ever sells below cost. The store itself — the live checkout a parent completes — is early access; we say so plainly rather than claim a working storefront before it is one. A charter running picture day across more than one campus should see charterschool.photos, the multi-campus, per-campus-isolated version of this. Early access · storefront checkout
Family updates, moving toward live text alerts
Send family updates and classroom news from one place today. Live text-message alerts — a message that reaches a family's phone the moment it is sent — are early access: the delivery pipeline is being finished, and this page does not claim it is live yet. Early access · live text delivery
Built to run lean
A back office sized for a small team and a tight per-pupil budget
One small team, one login
A charter often runs its whole front-of-house — records, the directory, the yearbook, the paper, and picture day — with a handful of staff and a rotating cast of parent volunteers, not a district department per function. One login and one roster feed every piece, so the same small team is not re-entering the same class list into five different tools.
A publications editor a volunteer can pick up
The yearbook and newspaper editor is built to be handed to a parent volunteer or a student staff, not just a trained yearbook adviser: drag-and-drop pages, your own fonts, version history so a mistake is never unrecoverable, and a print-preflight check that catches a broken job before it costs a reprint.
Free to start, and a fundraiser that keeps the whole gift
A charter’s per-pupil budget already has to stretch across an authorizer relationship, a board, and its families. This platform is free to start, so it replaces several vendor subscriptions that do not talk to each other with one bill instead of five, and the fundraiser keeps the whole gift rather than clipping a platform fee out of it. We do not calculate a per-pupil funding formula or a budget plan — that is not a claim this page makes.
Privacy you can stand behind
Records and photos, consent-gated and school-controlled
Student records and family contacts are consent-gated: who can see them follows the access permissions a school sets, and they are shared or sold only when permission allows it. A photo is sellable only when permission allows it, and data involving minor students is not made public without a family’s consent.
Records stay yours, a photo is sold only when permission allows it, and a charter’s families see that promise held in the tool their school actually uses.
The posture, in one sentenceWhat is true today
We are honest about what is live and what is early access
The records, directory, ID cards, publications editor, online enrollment, and fundraiser are live today, free to start. The picture-day parent storefront checkout and live text-message family alerts are early access — we tell you exactly where each piece stands rather than sell a planned feature as if it shipped.
Bring your charter onto one platform — start free, add the rest when you are ready.
Part of the charter family of pages
The sharper charter-specific mechanisms live next door
Charterschool.software is the day-to-day back office: records, the directory, publications, fundraising, and single-school picture day. charterschool.network carries the verifiable, offline-checkable enrollment lottery, open-meeting board governance, and honest ADA/membership math for a charter that needs those specific mechanisms. charterschool.photos carries the multi-campus, charter-network angle on picture day for a management organization running more than one site. homeroom.software is the wider K-12 platform all three run on.
FAQ
Common questions
What is charterschool.software?
It is the whole-back-office platform for a charter school: student records, a staff and family directory, an ID-card pipeline, the yearbook and school newspaper editor, family updates, fundraising, and picture day, angled at a charter's operating reality — answering to an authorizer and its own board, usually without a district back office, on a per-pupil budget that has to cover all of it.
Do you run enrollment lotteries?
Online enrollment and the student-records tier are built and live here. When a charter is oversubscribed and needs a fair, verifiable lottery — a SHA-256 commit-reveal draw a family can re-run offline — that specific mechanism lives at charterschool.network, which also carries open board governance and honest ADA/membership math. We cross-link it rather than duplicate it here.
Do you run picture day across more than one campus?
This page's picture-day module is built for a single school. A charter management organization running picture day across several campuses under one network, with per-campus tenant isolation and one roster imported once, should see charterschool.photos — the multi-campus angle on the same consent-gated pipeline.
Do you calculate our per-pupil funding, or file reports to our authorizer?
No, and we will not claim otherwise. No per-pupil funding or apportionment calculation, no authorizer-report generation, and no charter-renewal packet exist anywhere on this platform. What we offer is a clean, exportable records-and-money trail — the kind of paper trail that makes the authorizer conversation itself easier, not a report the platform files on your behalf.
What does it cost to run this?
The platform is free to start. Records, the directory, the publications editor, online enrollment, and the fundraiser (which takes none of the gift; card-processing fees still apply) are live today at no charge. The picture-day parent storefront checkout and live text-message alerts are early access — not sold as live features before they are ready.
Can a small team, or a parent volunteer, actually run this without a district office behind it?
Yes — that is the point of the design. One login and one roster carry records, the directory, and ID cards; the publications editor is built to be handed to a volunteer, with version history and a print-preflight check that catches a mistake before it becomes a reprint. A charter with a lean back office is exactly who this is built for.
How is student and family data handled?
Student records and family contacts are consent-gated: who can see them follows the access permissions a school sets, and they are shared or sold only when permission allows it. A photo is sellable only when permission allows it, and data involving minor students is not made public without a family's consent -- families control their own consent and can withdraw it at any time.
Is charterschool.software itself a charter school, an authorizer, or a nonprofit?
No. Charterschool.software is a for-profit software vendor whose product is this platform. It is not a charter school, not a charter authorizer, and not a nonprofit. Charter schools are public schools; the software that serves them is a for-profit product, and this page does not confuse the two.
How do we get started?
Get started free to set up records, the directory, and the publications editor today, or book a demo first if you want a walkthrough. There is no contract required to start.