Gate Officer Handbook

ClassAddmin is your school's day-to-day operations cockpit. From a single dashboard you'll track admissions, mark attendance, send invoices, collect MoMo payments, message parents, and run payroll.

The first time you sign in, head to Overview - that's the home screen. It shows today's collections, this week's absences, anything that needs your attention, and shortcuts to the things you'll touch every day.

You don't need to be a computer expert. Everything lives in the left sidebar: People, Academics, Finance, Operations, Administration. If you can find the right section, you can do the task - every page is built around one job.

Three things to do on day one

1. Add your school's logo and contact details under Settings → School. They appear on invoices, receipts and report cards.
2. Invite your team under Settings → Staff. Each person gets a sign-in link by email, SMS or shareable URL.
3. Open the Help button (bottom-right corner of every page) any time you're stuck. It searches our guides and can answer questions in plain English.

That's it - explore the sidebar at your own pace. If you ever get lost, the back button works the same as in any browser, and clicking the ClassAddmin logo (top-left) takes you home.

Dismissal is the moment a pupil physically leaves the school with someone. The pickup feature makes sure the right adult collects the right child, every event is logged, and parents are told the moment their child is released.

The three roles that touch pickup

• Class teacher — decides which pupils are ready to leave the classroom. Taps Hand off pupils on the mobile app; each pupil flips from In class to Ready.
• Security officer (or any staff granted pickup.release_at_gate) — sits at the gate, sees the ready pupils, picks who's collecting them, and taps Release. A release fires an SMS to the primary guardian.
• Parent (guardian) — manages the list of people allowed to collect their child, and can send a one-off delegate on any given day.

The two-step flow

Every pupil moves through three states each day:

1. In class — the default. The gate can't release a pupil in this state (unless the school has turned off the two-step requirement in Settings → Preferences → Dismissal).
2. Ready — the class teacher has handed them off. They're on the gate roster with a green ring.
3. Released — the security officer has completed the release. The pupil card dims out; a new event lands in the audit log.

How the gate verifies who's collecting

The gate offers three paths, and the school picks which shows up in the fast-lane bar at the top of /dismissal:

• The face — tap the pupil, see the authorised guardian roster (photos + names + last-4 phone), tap the face you see at the gate.
• A 6-digit code — the parent has sent a one-time delegate. The delegate shows the code they received by SMS; officer types it in.
• A QR scan — the parent app shows a live QR that refreshes every minute. Officer scans, releases.

Whichever path the officer uses, the release event records how it was verified. The head-teacher's audit log at /dismissal/log colour-codes overrides + refused-transport rows so anomalies stand out.

What happens after a release

• The primary guardian's phone gets an SMS: "Kofi was collected by Ama Mensah (mother) at 15:42 from main gate."
• The pupil disappears from the ready list.
• If the pupil is on a bus route, the gate refuses walk-collection outright — the officer sees "Kofi is on Route 2, ask a transport officer to change today's assignment first." The refusal itself is logged.

Sibling batch

If a parent is collecting three siblings at once, the officer doesn't have to release them one by one. When they pick a guardian's face, a green panel appears: "Also collecting today: Ama (Basic 4), Kwame (Basic 2)" with checkboxes. Tap Release once — all three land as separate audit events under the same collector.

Both buttons live on Pickup people in the parent app. They look similar but do very different things — pick the wrong one and either you're chasing a code every day or a stranger has permanent authority over your child.

The short version

• Add someone = This person is allowed on any school day, forever, until I say otherwise.
• Send someone today = Just today, just once. Give them a code that expires at end of day.

Add someone

Puts a real, permanent guardian on the pickup list.

• The gate sees them on the pupil's roster every day.
• You can add a photo so the officer recognises them at a glance.
• Once we launch QR, they get their own QR they show at the gate — no code needed.
• Toggling Can collect off any time revokes them without removing them from your other lists (SMS, chat).

Pick this when the person will fetch your child on any random day: your spouse, your parent, your regular driver-who-lives-with-you.

Send someone today

Creates a one-time exception for a person not on the authorised list.

• We text them a 6-digit code, valid only today. You get a receipt SMS at the same time.
• At the gate, they show the code — the officer types it in and releases your child. The code is single-use; once released, it stops working.
• The delegate never appears on your permanent list. Tomorrow, they need a fresh code again.
• You can cancel from the parent app any time before it's used.

Pick this when it's a one-off: a friend fetching your child because you're stuck in traffic, an uncle in from out of town, a driver you use occasionally.

Why the strict split matters

If you just kept adding people permanently, the authorised list would grow without bound and stop meaning anything at the gate. If everything was a one-off code, your spouse would need a new SMS every single day.

The rule of thumb: would you be comfortable if this person could collect your child three months from now on a day you didn't know about? If yes, Add someone. If not, Send someone today.

What both share

• Neither replaces the primary guardian on file — you (the account owner) are always on the list.
• Both actions log to your school's audit trail. The head-teacher can see who released whom, when, and how.
• Both fire an SMS to you when the pupil is actually released. You always know your child left, and with whom.

You are the last check before a child leaves the school. This screen (/dismissal) is designed for one job: verify who's collecting, tap Release.

The layout

• Fast-lane at the top: a 6-digit code field, a Scan QR button, or both — whichever your school chose in Settings → Preferences → Dismissal.
• Search below it: type any letters of the pupil's name, matching tiles filter live.
• Roster grid: every pupil enrolled today. Ring colours tell you the state:
  • Amber ring — still in class. Ask the class teacher to hand off first (if your school runs the two-step flow).
  • Emerald ring — Ready. Safe to release.
  • Zinc ring, dimmed — Already released today. Can't tap.
• BUS chip in the corner of a tile — pupil is on a bus route. Walk-collection is refused.

The three ways to verify

You'll use one of these three every time:

1. Face-tap (the common case)

1. Tap the pupil's tile → modal opens.
2. Under Who's collecting? you see a grid of authorised guardian faces.
3. Tap the face you see standing at the gate.
4. Tap Release.

If a photo isn't on file, you'll see initials. You still have the name + last-4 phone to check — ask the guardian "what's the last four of your phone?" If it matches, release.

2. Delegation code (parent sent someone else)

If the person at the gate is not a guardian you recognise, they may be a one-off delegate.

• Ask if they have a 6-digit code. Type it in the fast-lane field at the top.
• The modal opens automatically with the delegate's name + why the parent sent them + the last-4 of their phone.
• Confirm the phone last-4, tap Release.

If the code is wrong / expired / already used, the message tells you exactly which — read it aloud to the person at the gate so they can call the parent.

3. QR scan

If your school uses QR:

• Tap Scan QR.
• Camera opens. The parent holds their phone up — the modal opens the instant it decodes.
• Confirm the name that appears, tap Release.

QR codes rotate every 60 seconds. If it doesn't scan, ask the parent to unlock their phone again to refresh.

Sibling batch

When a guardian is collecting more than one of their children:

• Pick the guardian's face (or QR/code) for the first pupil.
• A green Also collecting today panel appears, listing every ready sibling that shares this guardian. All are pre-checked.
• Tap Release — every checked pupil is released as one action.

Uncheck any pupil who's staying back for after-care.

The transport hard-block

Some pupils go home by school bus. When you tap one of those, the release is refused with:

Kofi is on Route 2. To collect at the gate, ask a transport officer to change today's manifest first.

Don't try to work around it — call the transport officer or head-teacher, they'll move the pupil off today's route, then you can release normally. The refusal itself is logged so it's clear the correct process was followed.

Override — the escape valve

If a legitimate release genuinely fails all verification (parent has no phone, no code, no way to prove ID) and the head-teacher is on hand, they can approve an override. Every override is red-flagged in the audit log with the reason the head-teacher gave. Use sparingly — it's meant for exceptions, not for skipping steps at busy times.

After you release

Every release fires an SMS to the primary guardian within a minute:

Kofi was collected by Ama Mensah (mother) at 15:42 from main gate.

If a parent later says "I didn't know you released my child" — check the audit log, screenshot the SMS record, and the head-teacher can explain what happened.