A Note from Your Child’s School About Its Apps and Websites
Dear Parent or Guardian,
Despite our laughably small budget, the district insists we keep up with tech trends. As a result, you must manage a shit ton of cheap, hard-to-use apps and websites this year.
Classroom Assist
Students use this platform to chat with teachers and submit assignments outside of school hours. To enroll your child, click here and answer three ancient Babylonian riddles, each more difficult than the last. Failure to correctly answer each riddle will lock you out of the site for forty-eight hours—plenty of time to consider homeschooling your student.
Volunteer Wizard
A reminder that you’re required to volunteer at one super-stressful school event per semester. (FYI, we need someone to cover a vape-patrol shift at the homecoming dance.) Sign up on this overly complicated app that’ll make you wonder why we didn’t just use a Google Doc.
Parent Portal
Access student schedules and report cards on this site, which makes you manually log in each time you use it. But first, waste a few minutes trying to find the password. When you can’t find it, reset your login info. Repeat this process over and over, year after year, until your frustration hardens into anger and you no longer care what your kid is up to. Then—and only then—will you be free of the portal.
School Wallet
Pay for field trips and other events by linking your bank account to the frequently hacked School Wallet app.
Fund.ster
We recently made the unpopular decision to stop accepting cash and check donations. All school fundraising must now be done on this Kickstarter knockoff from the team that developed School Wallet.
Sports Apps
Register for athletics on SportsStarter but pay for the activity on PayBall. Message team parents/guardians on CrowdChat and coaches on CoachBabble. Find your team’s regular season schedule on YouthSked and its playoff schedule on TourneyTime. Buy tickets to athletic events on GameTix, but only after you’ve topped off your recently hacked School Wallet.
School Website
As some of you know, we recently shut down our school’s main site as a cost-saving measure. Thankfully, your local Ford dealer stepped in with a generous offer to include basic school info on its website. Visit HilldaleFord.com to find the district calendar, staff directories, and the best lease deals in the Tri-State Area.
IT Support
Due to budget cuts, our tech-support team now consists of a problematic chatbot named Chad—a donation from conservative school board member Chad Johnson. Full disclosure: Chatbot Chad often ignores IT questions and instead lists all the books it wants us to ban.
Complaints?
Is the stress of juggling the above giving you thoughts of harming others? Did Chatbot Chad offend you? Air your grievances on the Complaint Wizard site, which has been offline since the pandemic.
Sorry about all this,
Your School Leaders