As families and staff switch to new rooms and programs in the new year, a few quick updates in brightwheel will help admins keep information accurate and prevent any messaging or billing mix-ups.

🧑‍🧑‍🧒 Manage students & contacts

🎓 When a child graduates or leaves

Change their enrollment status. Update the child's enrollment status to ensure they are hidden from default views of your student and room lists. You will continue to have access to all student information, regardless of enrollment status.
Remove their room assignments. Remove rooms assigned to the child's profile so your room lists are always accurate. This will also prevent any accidental check-ins.
End bill plans. Make sure billing plans are scheduled to end when a child leaves. You can also temporarily pause billing plans.
Issue a credit or refund for their deposit. If the family paid a deposit, you can issue a credit or refund in brightwheel.

👋 When new families enroll

Add student profiles individually or in bulk. Start tracking student records for families and communicate with them in brightwheel as early as the first time you get in touch with them. Enrollment statuses such as Prospect, Waitlist, Toured and Applied will enable you to send prospective families messages and forms without having their children in default views of your roster.

If the family member already has a brightwheel account from a different program, follow these steps to connect their existing account to your program.
Create new bill plans with a template. Save time and create templates with the same charges and payment schedule.

🔀 When children transition to new rooms

Bulk update Homeroom assignments. Update assignment if multiple children in a room will be transitioning to the same new Room.

Additional family resources

👥 Manage staff

The beginning of a new school year or seasonal program is an excellent opportunity for administrators to review staff records. This may include:

Creating staff profiles to invite new staff members to brightwheel
Explore brightwheel’s new Professional Development product. Self-paced video modules keep staff engaged and on track. All completed training is automatically tracked, helping you stay organized and meet annual licensing requirements with ease.
Updating other Certifications & Professional Development Hours
Adjust staff access by managing roles and updating staff room assignments
Removing staff profiles for staff members who are not expected to return for the following season or school year

Additional resources

📘 Curriculum

Prepping curriculum for a new year

Review your Experience Curriculum setup. Confirm your EC subscription, delivery address, and upcoming monthly themes so teachers can prepare classroom materials in advance.
Update rooms to align with curriculum levels. As children transition, ensure each classroom is assigned the correct curriculum level (Infants, Toddlers, Preschool, Pre-K) so digital resources and planning tools stay organized.
Set up your digital lesson plans in the Learning tab
- Assign lesson plans to the correct rooms for the new year
- Archive or remove last year’s lesson plans if they’re no longer needed
- Upload or import any custom lessons your program wants to include
- Encourage teachers to review daily activities ahead of the first week to ensure materials and prep are complete
Plan for Assessments
- Set up your new assessment cycle.
  - Confirm your Fall, Winter, and Spring checkpoints so staff know when to begin collecting observations.
- Verify your assessment framework.
  - Make sure your program is using the correct state-aligned or brightwheel Framework before the year begins.
- Prepare staff for observation expectations.
  - Review how to tag milestones, use the Learning tab for documentation, and complete checkpoints on time.

🧹 End-of-year cleanup

🚪 Clean up rooms

Some programs choose to keep the same or similar rooms from year-to-year, while some programs opt to create new rooms or rename rooms for each seasonal or school year transition.
Administrators and managers have full control over room management, including creating rooms, editing or renaming rooms, and deleting rooms.

📝 Clean up forms

Close or delete any forms you don’t want parents accessing anymore. If you close the form, you can re-open these forms at any time if you need to access the information. Delete forms you don't plan to use again.

💲 Clean up charges in billing

The end of the year is a great time to review your Charge Library. If rates have changed or if your program will be offering different services, it is recommended to make sure those adjustments are reflected in the Charge Library before new billing plans are created.