The "Parents/Guardians" section of the "Parents/Siblings" tab in the Student records has some great capabilities. Just in case you have questions or would like a refresher, we've pulled together some additional notes on more detailed parent/guardian information tracking.
As some background, each parent record is treated kind of like a "card" of information. When you create a new parent record in the Students module, the system collects all of this information together such that when you link students as siblings/related at the same site, the parent's card is shared with both/all student records. Updating the parent information card for one student updates the information for all of their students.
Now, in terms of the specific capabilities of the parent records, there are quite a few options. General information fields are available as follows:
- Title, Name, Suffix
- Phone Numbers & Email
- Address
- Communication Preferences
- Occupation
- Driver's License Number
- Other Information
In addition, more particular settings are available. These include:
- Parent Order - This field lets you set an order number for a parent record to sort the order that parents appear in a their students' records. An order number of 1 is used to designate the primary parent for communication regarding the student.
- Use Student Address - This checkbox allows you to link a parent's address to reflect their student's current address (Changes to the student address will be reflected in the parent address).
- Communications Enable/Disable - Turn On/Off all communication with a parent. For example, a parent may not be allowed to receive communication for a student, but you could still use the communications preference checkboxes to note which methods of communication would be acceptable if this parent had to be reached.
- Safety - The "Authorized to pick-up" and "Emergency contact" options may be set independently and are used for tracking a parent/guardian/other's allowed access to pick up their student or serve as an emergency contact.
- Lives with Student - As an additional level information for communication, safety, and reporting, the "Lives with Student" dropdown is set separately from the address and notes whether this individual lives with the student - regardless of what their entered address may be.
All of these options are explained and highlighted in the following parent/guardian record screenshot:
Of course, please feel free to take a look at all of these options and let us know or chat in if you have any questions or need any tips on how to track any information.