Delayed opening
School opens [number] hours late tomorrow, [day], because of [reason]. Buses run on the same delay and breakfast is not served. Doors open at [time]; dismissal is unchanged at [time].
Free guide
The DirectToParents School Year Guide
One school year of family communication on the Hub, in order: enrollment, the weeks before the first day, opening weeks, the middle of the year, spring and the close. It is written for the person who will actually build the audiences, invite the coordinators and send the 5:30 a.m. delay message.
For the principal, office manager, communications lead or technology coordinator who runs family communication at an elementary school, a secondary school or a small district.
Moments first, then the setup
A school year's communication is a short list of moments that repeat: the delayed opening decided before dawn, the early dismissal nobody planned for, the bus running late, the practice cancelled because the other school closed, the chaperones needed by Friday, the fee that closes Monday. Each has an audience, a message, a person who sends it, and something that happens next. Build the Hub around those moments and the setup takes a summer afternoon.
Where to offer the connection at enrollment and back-to-school
Enrollment and back-to-school are the two moments every family reads something from you. Offer the connection there, then repeat it in person. Each adult connects once, and it carries year to year.
The enrollment confirmation and the back-to-school letter
Paste the Hub's standing enrollment link into both templates, with the code and QR code, and put the code on the first-day folder and the school website too. There is no PowerSchool, Infinite Campus, Skyward, Clever or ClassDojo connector; the link and the code work inside the tools you already use.
Open house, the office counter and the pickup line
Print the enrollment kit from Connections and put it wherever an adult stands still with a phone: the office counter, the open house table, the pickup-line sign.
Families who enrolled but never scanned
Upload a CSV of the parent and guardian contacts you already keep (up to 5,000 rows, previewed first); the Hub checks each address on Blasts and spreads invitations at up to 200 a day. Point your enrollment form at the inbound webhook, or use the Zapier app, so new families are invited the day they enroll.
Consent-first throughout, and everyone who connects is an adult: a parent, guardian or staff member. Anyone can mute or disconnect at any time.
Grades, campuses and activities: how to structure audiences
Onboarding seeds a starter pack: All Families, Athletics, Activities & Clubs, School Events, Volunteers, After-School & Childcare and Staff. All Families reaches every connected adult and asks for a step-up confirmation. Grades, classrooms, campuses, bus routes, teams and clubs are your school's own data: create them as audiences by name.
- One audience per grade, and per campus if you run more than one building. Names like Third Grade and North Campus work because families recognize them.
- Nest a classroom or team inside its grade with Inside audience, so a grade send covers everyone in it.
- Set grades and activities to families choose, so parents pick them on the preferences page. Set Staff to school assigns and fill it with Bulk assign. There are no rule-based audiences: import, then assign.
- Two guardians are two connections. Group them under one household on the person page and use One per household when a mailing only needs to reach the family once.
- Leave replies on for dismissal changes and volunteer calls. At year end, archive what you will rebuild; the connections stay, so families roll forward with you.
What to grant each coordinator, and everyone else
Each person signs in as themselves, so every send is attributed. The decision that matters is which audiences each coordinator may send to and read replies from.
Owner and admins: the principal and the front office
One Owner, usually the principal or the business manager, holds billing and the school's Blasts account on a mailbox on the school's own domain, so it survives a staffing change. Admins reach every audience, manage the team and approve access requests. Someone who only reads along is a Viewer.
Coordinators: athletics, activities, volunteers, campuses
Invite the athletic director as a Coordinator and, under Edit grants, tick Send and Read replies on Athletics only. Club sponsors get Activities & Clubs, the volunteer coordinator gets Volunteers, a campus lead gets that campus. Everything unticked is listed as what they cannot reach.
Two settings to decide before the first day
In Settings, choose whether a coordinator's Blasts wait for an administrator's approval, worth turning on where several people share the channel. On Home, add a passkey so an All Families send steps up with Face ID, Touch ID or a device PIN.
A teacher or coach who connected as a parent and asked for Hub access appears under Access requests; nobody gets in until an admin approves and picks the role.
Replies, and the email leg
Replies land in Conversations, one inbox the Hub team shares. A coordinator sees only replies from the audiences they are granted, so a parent's note to the athletic director never lands with the band sponsor. Assign each thread to whoever should answer it: the pickup question to the front desk, the eligibility question to athletics. Receiving is free for families; a reply they send uses their own credits. Anything that belongs in a student's official record belongs in the system that keeps it.
Each connected person chooses Blasts, email or both on their preferences page, along with their language, and the Hub sends the same message on both from the school's own verified address. Email is metered in email credits: every new Hub includes 50, and packs are bought on BlastCredits.
Credits: what a school year costs
One typed Blast to one person is one Blasts credit; one email is one email credit. Credits are prepaid on BlastCredits at standard pricing, never expire and carry no subscription, so nothing bills over the summer. A whole-school delay message to 900 connected people costs 900 credits; a third-grade field-trip change costs far less, which is the point of the audiences. A school registered as a nonprofit, or a public district, may apply for bonus credits on BlastCredits; nothing here depends on it.
Sending, audiences, roles, conversations, Content Series and the email leg are included from the start. Hub Pro, which adds Journeys and Event Campaigns, unlocks at $500 in cumulative purchases for any organization.
What the Hub does not replace
Keep enrollment, attendance, grades, assignments, lunch balances and payments where they are. The Hub holds none of that and has no connector to a student information system, a learning platform or a parent portal: contacts reach it as a CSV export, through the inbound webhook or through Zapier, and a public school calendar link in Settings puts upcoming dates on Home with an Announce button.
It also does not replace your emergency procedures or official notification. When the day changes this channel reaches families fast and shows who has read it; what your school is required to do stays as it is.
The school year plan
The first two are setup; the rest are the rhythm.
Enrollment opens Publish the connection
Sign in, finish onboarding and click Sync connections. Paste the standing enrollment link, code and QR into the enrollment confirmation and the school website. Create the grade and campus audiences before the first family enrolls, and turn on auto-accept.
Two weeks before the first day Letter, coordinators, contact import
Put the code in the back-to-school letter and the first-day folder. Invite the office manager as an Admin, and the athletic director and club sponsors as Coordinators granted their own audiences. Import the contacts for families who never scanned, and save the closure, dismissal change and deadline messages as Templates.
Opening weeks Welcome, kit, first real send
Send a welcome to All Families (it asks for your passkey): how the day runs, how to pick grades and activities on the preferences page, and that changes will come through this channel. Put the kit out at open house and start a Content Series for the Sunday week-ahead note. After the first real send, open Sent & Scheduled and call the few families who have not read it.
Through the year Run the moments
Coordinators handle cancelled practices and moved rehearsals for their own audiences. The principal or the office sends delayed openings and dismissal changes to the grades affected, and to All Families only when the whole school is. Volunteer calls and pickup changes carry a YES or NO reply so the answers count themselves. New families arrive through the webhook, or re-import each term.
Spring Deadlines, events and the busy weeks
Form and fee deadlines go out as a short run of reminders to the grades they apply to. Conference week, the concert and the field trips get their build-up. Top up credits before winter weather. With Hub Pro, an Event Campaign carries the arc around back-to-school night and moves with the date.
Year close Thank, archive, keep the connections
Send a thank-you with next year's first day and the summer office hours. Archive the grade audiences you will rebuild; the connections stay, so returning families are reachable in August. Review who holds Owner and Admin before staff change over.
What the Hub does, and does not do
- Sends a typed message with formatting, links, images and up to three attachments to the audience you pick.
- Sends the same message by email to each family who chose email, from the school's own verified address.
- Counts the YES or NO replies that parents, guardians and staff send themselves.
- Schedules a send, repeats it weekly, runs a Content Series, and limits a mailing to one copy per household.
- Reports delivered and read counts from confirmed actions, and lets a coordinator reach only the audiences granted.
- Hold enrollment, attendance, grades, assignments or lunch balances; there is no student information system, learning platform or parent-portal connector.
- Replace your emergency procedures or official notification. It is one more channel beside them.
- Send SMS. This is Blasts plus email; there are no mobile numbers to collect.
- Reach anyone who has not connected, or record an answer on anyone's behalf. A read count is not a confirmation; ask for a YES or NO reply.
- Send campaign badges, voice Blasts, polls, countdowns or calendar attachments. Those are Blasts-app sender features, not Hub composer sends.
- Gate access on this guide. Any school can sign in and set up a Hub today.
Hub Pro unlocks at $500 in cumulative purchases for any organization. A nonprofit school or a public district can apply for bonus credits on BlastCredits; that only adds credits and never unlocks anything.
Ready when you are
DirectToParents is open today. Sign in to your Hub, or set one up through onboarding after signing in; the Hub activates with your school's first credit purchase on BlastCredits. The Hub documentation covers everything in this guide in more detail, in school terms.
See it in action at Asterfield Academy (a fictional example organization created to show the product, not a customer)
Product facts on this page reflect published Blasts.app information as of 2026-08-17.