Parent Portal is an optional and free feature included with Bark for Schools that helps extend student online safety by sharing Bark alerts with parents/guardians based on your school’s settings.
What parents receive:
Their own child's alerts (if other student emails are involved, they are anonymized)
Notifications based on your chosen severity level and time window
Before you launch
Decide your rollout approach
Pick a launch strategy that fits your community and support capacity:
Full rollout: invite all parents/guardians at once
Targeted rollout: invite specific groups first (e.g. specific grades or high-risk students)
Small pilot: invite a limited set of school staff to test the experience
Make sure Bark for Schools is calibrated
Best practice is to launch Parent Portal after Bark for Schools has been live long enough for your team to understand and fine-tune alert sensitivity and notification settings (often around 30 days).
Plan your communications
A clear message ahead of time improves activation and reduces confusion. Consider including:
Why your school uses Bark for Schools
What Parent Portal is (and isn’t)
What types of alerts parents can expect
Where parents can go for support ([email protected])
We also have an email template to get you started.
Configure Parent Portal settings
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.
💡 Pro Tip: Many schools start with Severe only + After hours during the school calendar year, and adjust as needed during summer/winter breaks.
How to launch Parent Portal
You can invite parents using one of these methods:
ClassLink integration
Here's how to invite contacts to Parent Portal using ClassLink.
Clever integration
Available to Bark for Schools+ users, here's how to invite contacts to Parent Portal using Clever.
CSV upload
Upload a CSV that lists student emails on the same row as their parent's email. If families have multiple children, then list them in a new row, as seen in the example below.
child_email | parent_email |
Processing note: Invitations may take a few hours to process after upload. If uploaded late in the day, processing may complete the next business morning depending on volume.
After invitations are sent
Parents receive an email invitation with a unique link to create their Parent Portal account.
If they have multiple children, they do not need to create separate Parent Portal accounts. Once they've created an account with the first child, it should automatically add the other children.
If they already have a Bark account under that email address, the student accounts are linked automatically.
If the invitation isn’t completed, reminder emails are sent every Sunday unless they've clicked Unsubscribe at the bottom of the email.
Super Admins can track Parent Portal adoption in Parent Portal Settings and export a report showing which parents have completed account setup.
Reviewers can manually share a student’s alert with a parent, as long as the parent has an active Parent Portal account.
The Reviewer finds the alert in question.
On the top right, click Share with parent.
Don't see this?
The parent may not have accepted their Parent Portal invite, or they may have already been sent the alert.
Tech nights
Tech nights are a great way for parents to learn more about what could occur online and how they can best protect their children. We can even help you host one! Reach out to us with your goals and we'll be in touch with how we can help.