publicschool.network · Elected-board governance, run in the open · Early access · 2026
Traditional public schools are a distinct kind of school: an ELECTED board of a public district, enrollment by attendance zone by right, and a public role to account for in the open. This platform leads with the one thing a public board most needs — a policy manual and NAMED, on-the-record roll-call votes, published to a sunshine-law portal a resident reads with no login. Plus open enrollment, a free student-records tier, IDEA special education, and honest ADA/membership math. There is no lottery here — that is charterschool.network. It is a for-profit platform FOR public schools — not a public school itself. Money is honest-off; a conversation is the honest next step.
How it works
Every step is described as it is built today, with the honest-off holds called out where they exist.
Step 1 · Set up the school or district — records tier free
The platform stands up the school or district’s vertical and charges nothing to do it. The student-records tier settles no money. From day one the enrollment and student data is school-owned, under the district’s own brand and contact, not the platform’s. There is no admissions gate to configure — a public school enrolls by attendance zone, by right.
Step 2 · Enroll resident students and run the school
Open enrollment registers the resident students of the attendance zone and finalizes them onto the roster — no lottery, no choice application. From there the records daily-driver carries the gradebook and GPA rollup, printable transcripts and report cards, immunization-compliance tracking, per-meeting attendance, and IDEA special-education deadline and service-minute tracking. Records settle no money; the tier is free.
Step 3 · Govern in the open — policy manual, meetings, named roll-call votes
The elected board runs its policy manual and its meetings on the platform: immutable adopted-text policy versions with a per-requirement staff-acknowledgment ledger, and meetings with agenda, minutes, motions under a quorum floor, and named, on-the-record roll-call votes. A public sunshine-law portal is built to read the adopted record with no login. Honest-off: a meeting is not marked adopted until the minutes-adoption finalizer and e-sign seal are wired — a human still signs the record.
Step 4 · Report the accountability numbers — honestly, with the holds named
Attendance and ADA/membership math is computed and ready for the accountability conversation, and the district planning-and-accountability model (enrollment projection, small-cell-safe subgroup breakdown, an accountability dashboard) is built. But the state submission channel is honest-off — the export stages and submits nothing — and the district model is not wired to a live route yet. We provide the mechanism and the math; the state filing and the live district dashboard are held for a signed channel and a human step.
What is built
Every capability is labelled honestly: Built means the underlying engine exists and is production-ready. Where a finalizer, a submission channel, or a live wire-up is held, the label says so — and money is honest-off across all of it today.
A traditional public school is governed by an ELECTED board of a public district, and its meetings are public business. The governance engine runs the board’s policy manual (draft → adopted → superseded → archived, an immutable version sequence under a closed, fail-closed lifecycle law that refuses an out-of-order or unauthorized transition) and its meetings (agenda, minutes, motions with a quorum-floored tally, and NAMED, on-the-record roll-call votes recorded into the minutes for open-meeting / sunshine-law transparency). This is the deliberate opposite of a secret ballot: a board vote is a public act by public officials, so each member’s yea / nay / abstain is kept, openly, by name. The governance and roll-call engines are built and their routes are registered. Honest-off hold: the minutes-ADOPTION finalizer and the cryptographic e-sign seal are unprovisioned, so a meeting is not marked adopted until that human step is wired. Nothing here is legal advice.
Built & wired · adoption finalizer honest-off
Sunshine law makes a public board’s ADOPTED record public, so the public portal is unauthenticated by design — and fail-closed on everything else. It returns ONLY meetings whose status is ‘adopted’: a draft, in-progress, tabled, or unadopted meeting is NEVER exposed, and named roll-call votes ride along only for an already-adopted meeting. A resident, a reporter, or a board watcher reads the adopted agenda, minutes, and the named votes of their public officials with no account and no login. The public-portal read is built and wired as the read-only twin of the staff-gated management routes — it shares the same governance engine with no fork. Honest today: because the minutes-adoption finalizer is honest-off, the public portal reads an empty adopted record until a board adopts its first minutes through the wired step.
Built & wired · adopted-only, default-deny
A district’s board policy manual is a living, versioned document, and its staff have to acknowledge the policies that bind them. The policy engine publishes immutable adopted-text versions (you cannot silently rewrite an adopted version), walks each policy through its lifecycle under the closed law, assigns a per-requirement acknowledgment, and keeps the compliance ledger: who has acknowledged which policy version, and whose acknowledgment is still outstanding. A staffer reads the published manual and clears their own outstanding acknowledgments; a governance officer reads the cross-staff compliance ledger (a rep or teacher is hard-denied at the management surface). Persistence is durable and tenant-scoped (RLS deny-by-default). No money, no AI. The e-signature finalizer is an unprovisioned honest-off seam — never a fabricated signature.
Built & wired · durable, tenant-scoped
Attendance is recorded per class meeting, and the engine computes the state-reportable rollup a public school’s accountability runs on: a present/absent count, an average-daily-attendance ratio (NULL on a zero denominator — never a fabricated 0/0), and a distinct-student membership headcount. That is the honest arithmetic behind the numbers. What is HONEST-OFF: the STATE SUBMISSION channel. The export path stages and validates an extract but submits NOTHING, and the state-agency reporting code rides through as null until a per-state map is seeded and signed off. We do not file ADA to the state, do not calculate per-pupil funding or apportionment, and do not produce a named accountability report. The attendance and ADA/membership math is built; the submission channel is held.
Built math · state submission honest-off
A public district plans and reports at the DISTRICT level: how many students will enroll next year, how its subgroups break down, and how its sites perform on the accountability indicators. The pure model is built — a deterministic enrollment projection over supplied history (it never fabricates a year that was not given), a subgroup breakdown with small-cell suppression (a subgroup with fewer than ten students is shown as ‘<10’, never an exact re-identifying count), an accountability dashboard (graduation rate, chronic absenteeism, achievement / attendance / discipline rollups), and a district-vs-site ranking. It is aggregate-only, district-scope, and reuses the platform’s FERPA small-cell wall. This is deliberately HONEST-OFF: the model consumes an INJECTED aggregate reader and is NOT wired to a live route yet; every indicator with no provisioned source reports off, never invented. The model is built; it is not surfaced live.
Built model · not yet surfaced (honest-off)
A public school enrolls the students of its attendance zone BY RIGHT — there is no admissions decision and no lottery here (that is charterschool.network’s case, not this one). Register a resident student, finalize them onto the roster, and from there the records daily-driver carries a roster, a gradebook with GPA rollup, printable transcripts and report cards, and immunization-compliance tracking — and because a public school serves every student it enrolls, the IDEA special-education engine tracks compliance deadlines and logs service-minute delivery against what a plan requires. The student-records tier settles no money — records are the free tier. Honest scope: this is an enrollment-and-records daily-driver that COMPLEMENTS a district’s system of record; it is not a certified, full academic system-of-record, and its roster export is not an IMS/1EdTech-certified integration. Student plan data is minor PII — consent-gated, school-owned, and never made public.
Built · records tier free
For public schools
An elected board’s legitimacy rests on being seen to act in the open. The adopted record turns that into a public artifact: an immutable policy manual, named roll-call votes, and a sunshine-law portal a resident opens with no login — adopted-only and fail-closed on everything else. You run the board; the platform keeps the record honest.
Open enrollment by attendance zone (no lottery), roster, gradebook, transcripts, report cards, immunization compliance, per-meeting attendance, and IDEA special-education tracking — the student-records tier settles no money. It complements your system of record rather than claiming to replace it: honest about being an enrollment-and-records daily-driver, not a certified academic system-of-record.
Per-meeting attendance, an average-daily-attendance ratio computed honestly (null on a zero denominator, never a fabricated 0/0), and a membership headcount. The district planning-and-accountability model — enrollment projection, small-cell-safe subgroup breakdown, an accountability dashboard — is built. But the state submission channel is honest-off (the export submits nothing), and the district model is not wired to a live route yet.
To book a conversation: [email protected].
What is built and what is honest-off — plainly
Built and wired today: elected-board governance (a policy manual with immutable adopted versions under a closed lifecycle law, meetings with agenda/minutes/motions, named roll-call votes, and a staff-acknowledgment compliance ledger); the sunshine-law public portal (unauthenticated, adopted-only, fail-closed default-deny); open enrollment by attendance zone and the free student-records tier (roster, gradebook and GPA rollup, transcripts and report cards, immunization compliance); attendance and ADA/membership math; and IDEA special-education deadline and service-minute tracking.
Honest-off — present but not enabled for live use: all money (no live billing, no subscription, no live payment); the public board portal’s minutes-adoption finalizer and the cryptographic e-sign seal (so the public portal reads an empty adopted record until a board adopts through the wired step); the state ADA-and-membership SUBMISSION channel (the export stages and submits nothing, held for a signed channel and per-state maps); and the DISTRICT planning-and-accountability model, which is built as a pure model but is not wired to a live route yet. We do NOT calculate per-pupil funding or apportionment, and we do NOT produce a named accountability report — that code does not exist, so we do not claim it. There is NO enrollment lottery here — that is charterschool.network’s case, not ours. No district has run its board governance live on publicschool.network yet. A conversation is the honest next step. Nothing here is legal advice.
The platform underneath & the charter case
publicschool.network is the traditional-public-school front door on a broader school platform. The same platform runs enrollment, student records, communications, and governance for schools of every kind; homeroom.software is the publishing platform it is built on. If your school admits by choice or an oversubscribed lottery rather than by attendance zone, that is a charter case — charterschool.network leads with a verifiable enrollment lottery instead. publicschool.network is a for-profit product — a software vendor serving public schools, not a public school, district, government entity, or nonprofit itself.
Early access · School boards, district leaders, and families · Be the first district to govern in the open here
publicschool.network is in active development. No district has run its board governance live on publicschool.network yet. We do conversations that show the current state honestly: how the elected-board policy manual and named roll-call votes work, how the sunshine-law public portal reads the adopted record, how open enrollment and the free records tier flow, how the attendance math and the district accountability model are bounded, and exactly what is built versus honest-off. There is no pricing commitment and no signup. If it looks right for your school or district, we discuss what early access looks like.
To book: email [email protected].
FAQ
No. publicschool.network is a for-profit software company — a vendor whose product is this platform for public schools and districts. It is not a public school, not a school district, not a government or public entity, and not a nonprofit. Public schools and districts are the customers; the software that serves them is a for-profit product. We are precise about the difference because it matters: nothing we run is a public entity, and this site sells software, not a public service or a donation.
They serve different kinds of school. A charter school admits by an oversubscribed lottery, is run by its own independent board, and answers to an authorizer — so charterschool.network leads with a verifiable enrollment lottery. A traditional public school enrolls the students of its attendance zone by right, is governed by an ELECTED board of a public district, and answers to its community through open-meeting transparency — so this site leads with elected-board governance, a sunshine-law public portal, and district accountability. There is no lottery here. If your school admits by choice or lottery, charterschool.network is the right front door.
The board runs its policy manual and its meetings on the platform. The policy manual publishes immutable adopted-text versions under a closed lifecycle law — you cannot silently rewrite an adopted policy — with a per-requirement staff-acknowledgment ledger. Meetings carry an agenda, minutes, motions under a quorum floor, and NAMED, on-the-record roll-call votes recorded into the minutes. A board vote is a public act by public officials, so each member’s yea / nay / abstain is kept openly, by name — the deliberate opposite of a secret ballot. The governance and roll-call engines are built and their routes are registered.
Yes — that is what the sunshine-law public portal is for. It is unauthenticated by design and fail-closed on everything else: it returns ONLY meetings whose status is ‘adopted’, so a draft, in-progress, tabled, or unadopted meeting is never exposed. A resident or a reporter reads the adopted agenda, minutes, and named votes with no login. Honest today: because the minutes-adoption finalizer is honest-off, the public portal reads an empty adopted record until a board adopts its first minutes through the wired step.
No — and we will not pretend otherwise. Attendance is recorded per class meeting and the engine computes the average-daily-attendance ratio and the membership headcount honestly (a null ratio on a zero denominator, never a fabricated number). But the state SUBMISSION channel is honest-off: the export path stages and validates an extract and submits nothing, and the state-agency reporting code rides through as null until a per-state map is seeded and signed off. We do not calculate per-pupil funding or apportionment, and we do not produce a named accountability report. That code does not exist, so we do not claim it.
Not yet — and we are honest about it. The district planning-and-accountability model is built as a pure model: a deterministic enrollment projection (it never fabricates a year that was not given), a subgroup breakdown with small-cell suppression (a subgroup under ten students shows as ‘<10’, never an exact count), an accountability dashboard, and a district-vs-site ranking, all aggregate-only and district-scope. But it consumes an injected aggregate reader and is not wired to a live route yet, so every indicator with no provisioned source reports off. The model is built; it is not surfaced live. We say so plainly rather than imply a dashboard you cannot open.
There is no lottery. A traditional public school enrolls the students of its attendance zone by right — you register a resident student and finalize them onto the roster; there is no admissions decision to make. (A lottery is a charter-school mechanism; if that is your case, charterschool.network is the right site.) From enrollment the student flows into the free records daily-driver: roster, gradebook, transcripts, report cards, immunization compliance, and IDEA special-education tracking.
Be clear-eyed: this is an enrollment-and-records daily-driver that COMPLEMENTS a district’s system of record. It carries enrollment, roster, gradebook, transcripts, report cards, immunization compliance, and attendance — but it is not a certified, full academic system-of-record, and its OneRoster-shaped roster export is not an IMS/1EdTech-certified integration. We say so plainly rather than imply a certification we do not hold.
A public school serves every resident student it enrolls, and special education is part of that. The IDEA compliance-ops engine tracks deadlines and logs service-minute delivery against what a plan requires, flagging where a due date or a minutes obligation is at risk. It is a tracking-and-flagging substrate — it does not author a plan, decide a service, or render legal advice. Student plan data is minor PII: consent-gated, school-owned, and never made public.
The student-records tier settles no money — enrollment, roster, gradebook, transcripts, and immunization records are the free tier. There is no live billing here, no subscription, and no live payment: money is honest-off across the platform today. If a district later turns on a fee-bearing module, that is a separate, opt-in decision — the records daily-driver itself is free to run.
Student and family enrollment and records data is owned by the school and is never sold to or shared with outside companies, advertisers, or third parties. Data involving minor students is consent-gated — a family opts in before any disclosure — and consent can be withdrawn at any time. Minor student data runs on our own private systems and is never made public. The public board record carries the votes of public officials by name (a public act), never student information.
By a conversation, not a signup. publicschool.network is in active development, and no district has run its board governance live on it yet. A conversation shows the current state honestly: how the elected-board policy manual and named roll-call votes work, how the sunshine-law public portal reads the adopted record, how open enrollment and the free records tier flow, and exactly what is built versus honest-off. There is no pricing commitment and no signup. Email [email protected].