Product overview
One platform for the whole school program.
Most schools stitch together a yearbook tool, a separate newspaper tool, a website host, a picture-day vendor, a records system, and a money app — many logins, many student lists, many invoices. Homeroom is one platform on one student list: every publication, the newsroom that produces them, the online edition that publishes them, picture day, the money lanes that fund the program, the official student record, and a privacy wall the database itself enforces.
No contract. No minimum order. No overprint — print-on-demand means zero leftover-inventory risk.
A desktop-class book builder
The editor is the daily driver — built to win on the work an adviser actually does, not a feature checklist. Everything in this section is live today.
Real editing, real history
Many staff can edit the same spread at once and see each other’s live cursors, and undo only ever takes back your own work. Save a named checkpoint any time and restore a spread in one click — restoring adds new steps instead of erasing the old ones. Everything works by keyboard, the same as by mouse. Shipped
Your brand, locked
Upload your own fonts (the platform checks the license and that they work in a PDF), pull from a curated set of Google and free fonts, and turn on brand-color, font, and logo lock so a 30-student staff can’t break the book’s look. Shipped
Print that can’t silently fail
The print step refuses to export if a font file is missing — a missing font fails the job rather than quietly swapping in the wrong one and shipping a broken book. Portraits, the directory, and ID-card pages all flow from the same student list. Shipped
Every publication, one student list
The yearbook, the newspaper, the literary magazine, a general magazine, event and sports programs, and an always-open online edition all share one student list and one permission system. Write a story once and reuse it across publications — the work other tools split across separate apps.
Yearbook, newspaper, literary magazine
Several publication types in one tool, each with its own page model and deadlines, all drawing on the shared student list and media library. Shipped
A pitch-to-publish workflow
A real newsroom: a story moves from a pitch, to an assignment, to a draft, through a section editor, to the editor-in-chief, and only then to the reader — an approval chain you can rename but never remove. The same discipline a college paper runs on, sized for a high-school staff. Shipped
Public online editions
A student publication gets a public, fast online edition with no trackers — the reader-facing twin of the print book, for stories that can’t wait for a printer. See a live edition. Shipped
Teach as you build
Short lessons live inside the software, so an adviser teaches design, journalism, and ethics on the real page a student is building — not from a separate binder. Shipped
The lanes that fund the program
A program runs on money, not just pages. Homeroom builds the revenue lanes in — and is honest about which front door is still in early access.
Ads & recognition
Senior tributes & business ads
A full ad-sales engine: recognition ads, booster strips, business ads, proofs and approvals, and an order ledger — the highest-margin non-book line. Shipped
Fundraising
The gift goes to the school
Add any amount per book, a donate-a-book item, and campaigns with a goal and a donor wall. Homeroom adds no platform fee on top of a gift — we take none of it (card-processing fees still apply). Shipped
Picture day
A portrait sale that pays the school
Parents will reach a no-login store with a claim code, see only the permitted, sellable photos of their own student, and every order will split four ways — studio, photographer, school, and platform — in exact cents. The school will earn a share where other tools pay it nothing, and when the school shoots the photos itself the studio share drops and the school keeps more. The capture pipeline and the consent gate that feed the store are shipped; the store and its four-way split are building now. Parent store & four-way split in early access
The school’s official record, on the same spine
Underneath every publication, sale, and credential is one official student record. Permission is captured the moment a family registers, and that is the permission every later check reads. The whole records area stays hidden until your school turns it on, and a studio sales rep can never see any of it. A dedicated tour walks the records spine in depth. See student records and academics →
The records foundation, live today
Families register online on a no-login link locked to one school, with permission captured at sign-up; the student roster, the school-year terms and class periods, enrollment and withdrawal, guardians, and class assignments are the single source of truth the whole platform reads from. Shipped
Attendance and scheduling
The course catalog and master schedule check for clashes and seat limits, and an unexcused absence can automatically tell the permitted guardians, using only the child’s first name and never twice. This is new and growing on the records spine. New and growing
Transcripts, special education, and more
Transcripts and a credit-weighted grade-point average, special-education (IEP and 504) authoring with a state-and-holiday-aware deadline clock, behavior records with extra-care hiding, an early-warning risk score, and tamper-proof prepaid meal accounts are being built on the same permission-walled spine. New and growing
The privacy wall, built into the pipeline
The thing a combined-package vendor cannot copy without rebuilding its cloud: facial recognition is off unless a parent turns it on; “find my child” is a student-list lookup, not a face match; a photo is sellable only when permission allows; and face templates, when used, are kept in our own private system and destroyed when consent is withdrawn. It is also a single-school privacy wall the database itself enforces — an adviser at one school can never see another school’s students, proven against a real database.
We’re honest about what’s shipped
The book builder, the newsroom, public online editions, the ad-sales engine, the fundraising lane where the whole gift goes to the school, the picture-day pipeline with consent-gated sales and facial recognition off by default, the student-records foundation, the privacy wall, and the teach-as-you-build curriculum are live today. A few helpers — the parent portrait store and its four-way split, pay-over-time options, live text-message sending, the rest of the records suite (attendance, transcripts, special-education authoring, behavior, meal accounts), and the suggestion-style writing tools — are new and growing, turning on as each piece and outside service is connected. Family communications and safety are new and growing too: we show only the parts that work today and name what we do not do yet. We never sell a plan for later as if it shipped.