Parent Portal is a free, complementary feature of Bark for Schools that allows administrators to share certain Bark alerts with parents and guardians. It helps ensure important alerts are seen and acted on even when school staff may not be available ā such as evenings, weekends, and school breaks.
How does it work?
Once launched, parents and guardians are invited to create a Parent Portal account. Parents who create their account then automatically receive alerts for their child. If they donāt complete setup immediately, reminder emails are sent weekly unless they unsubscribe from the invitation.
Alerts delivered to parents are based on the severity settings and timing windows chosen by your school.
Parents access their alerts through:
The Bark website at bark.us
The Bark mobile app on iOS or Android
What severity and timing settings are available?
Customize the severity and timing of alerts that parents receive.
Log in as a Super Admin.
On the top right menu, select Parent Portal > Settings.
Configure Severity
Choose whether parents receive Severe only or All alerts. Note that Parent Portal still uses your existing school sensitivity settings. Alerts filtered out at the school level will not be shared with parents.Configure Timing
Choose After hours or Anytime.Changes to severity and timing settings apply moving forward and do not affect previously sent alerts.
š” Pro Tip: Many schools start with Severe only + After hours during the school calendar year, and adjust as needed during summer/winter breaks.
What do parents see in an alert?
When parents receive an alert:
They see the reason the activity was flagged (e.g., bullying, self-harm, sexual content).
A snippet of the flagged content and where it came from (e.g., Gmail, Drive).
To protect student privacy, any personally identifiable information (PII) for other students is removed unless it was already included in the flagged message itself, as in āJessica saidā¦ā
Can parents receive alerts via text message?
Yes, if they've enabled text notifications in their account settings.
Can reviewers share individual alerts manually with parents?
Yes, Reviewers can manually share an alert with a studentās parent from the alert screen, as long as the parent has an active Parent Portal account.
Can more than one guardian receive alerts for the same student?
Yes, you can invite each legal guardian to their own Parent Portal account.
What if a parent loses custody or should no longer receive alerts?
To remove access from a parent/guardian, please contact us at [email protected] for further assistance.
Will Bark āspamā parents with unrelated emails?
No, Bark will not spam or sell parentsā information. Parent Portal alerts are specific to Bark for Schools monitoring and only come when selected thresholds are met.
There is an optional upgrade path to Bark Premium that they'll see in some parts of their Parent Portal dashboard to expand monitoring to include their child's personal text messages and social media usage.
If a parent or guardian already has a Bark account, can they use Parent Portal?
Yes. Parents and guardians who already have a Bark account can use that same account to access Parent Portal, as long as they are invited by the school using the same email address. Once invited, Parent Portal alerts will appear alongside their existing Bark account information.
Parent Portal access does not require parents to upgrade or change their existing Bark account.
How can we track who has activated Parent Portal accounts?
Super Admins can view activation stats in Parent Portal Settings. You can see:
How many parents have been invited
How many have completed setup