For advisers & schools
The tool you actually want to teach on — and run your whole program in.
You’re the adviser: you lay out the book, run the staff, sell the ads, hit the deadlines, and keep the data safe — usually on top of teaching a full load. Homeroom is built for that reality. A desktop-class book builder, a real newsroom, the money lanes, and a single-school privacy wall the database itself enforces, so the one thing you never have to worry about is a student’s record leaking.
No contract. No minimum order. No overprint — the late book just prints later.
Everything the program needs, in one login
No more stitching a yearbook tool to a newspaper tool to a website host to a picture-day vendor. One student list, one staff list, one invoice. All of this is live today.
The daily-driver book builder
Undo and redo, version history, layers, masking, auto-layout, brand-locking, full keyboard control, your own fonts and color palettes, and a print check that refuses to send a broken job. Shipped
A real newsroom
Run the newspaper and literary magazine on a pitch-to-editor-in-chief approval workflow, with public online editions for stories that can’t wait for the printer. One platform for every publication. Shipped
Ads, fundraising, and the family money
An ad-sales engine for senior tributes and business ads, and a fundraising lane where Homeroom adds no platform fee on top of a gift (card-processing fees still apply). The margin most tools leave on the table. Shipped
Picture day that pays the school
Permission-checked portraits flow straight into the directory and ID cards. Shipped Parents will buy from a no-login store with a claim code, and every order will split four ways so the school earns a share; run your own picture day and the studio share drops, so the school keeps the profit. Parent store & four-way split in early access
A curriculum that lives in the work
The yearbook and newspaper class is the journalism class. Homeroom puts a teach-as-you-build curriculum inside the software — design, reporting, interviewing, captions, ethics, and law — so you teach on the real page a student is building, not from a binder on the side. It maps to the journalism-education standards advisers already answer to, and it’s honest about which standards each lesson meets and about where a skill is a craft judgment versus a hard rule.
Curriculum shipped
A single-school wall the database enforces
This is the part your district’s counsel cares about, and it isn’t a policy promise — it is a hard rule inside the database. An adviser, a student staffer, or a studio sales rep at one of your schools cannot see another school’s students. It is enforced one layer below the screens, not in the app, and proven against a real database across the full student record: a cross-school view returns zero student rows even with both schools in scope. This is how Homeroom is built to fit the federal student-records law (FERPA).
Picture day adds the second wall: “find my child” is a student-list lookup rather than a face match, facial recognition is off unless a parent turns it on, a portrait is sellable only when permission allows, and photos are never sold. Face data stays in our own private system. The privacy shield you can hand to procurement.
Accessibility & language access
Built so every reader is included — and we never charge extra for it.
Federal law already requires schools to be accessible to people with disabilities and to reach families who speak another language at home. Most school software treats that as a paid add-on. We build it in, and here is our promise: we will never charge you extra to be accessible, multilingual, safe, or compliant. The reading and design tools below are accessible right now — not on a roadmap.
Read it on any device
Online editions work with screen readers, reflow the text to any phone, and can be run entirely by keyboard — a real accessible reader, not a locked flip-book. Shipped
Screen-reader-friendly PDF export
Export a PDF with a proper heading structure, a navigable order, and alt text on images — no extra software and no extra license. Shipped
A design canvas you can run by keyboard
Move, resize, rotate, group, copy, paste, and undo all work by keyboard, with a visible focus outline and no keyboard traps. Shipped
Contrast and alt text, checked automatically
An automated test checks that every color pairing is readable, and every content image carries alt text or is marked decorative. There is also a text-only reading mode and a high-contrast download theme. Shipped
Each school sets its main language — English or French today, with a French-first setting for Quebec. A private translation engine that runs on our own computers (so no student or parent information is sent to an outside translation cloud), translated required notices, and read-aloud in the family’s language are coming — we will not call them shipped until they are.
No contract to escape, no lock to spring
Bring your student list by single sign-on (the standard ways your district already logs in) or a standard import from your student-information system. There is no multi-year exclusive term, no overprint, and no minimum-order commitment — you stay because the tool and the economics are good, never because a contract traps you. Try it on one publication; bring the rest when you’re ready.
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 portrait sales and facial recognition off by default, the student-records foundation, the privacy wall, accessibility, and the curriculum are live today. A few helpers — the parent portrait store and its four-way split, pay-over-time options, the rest of the records suite (attendance, transcripts, special-education authoring, behavior, meal accounts), and the suggestion-style writing tools — are new and growing. Family communications and safety are new and growing too: we show only what works today and name what we do not do yet. We’ll tell you exactly where a given piece is.
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