ROOTS

A custom school management platform for roots302.org

ROOTS has been running a farm and forest school in Delaware for years — the kind of place where kids learn outdoors, in community, at a pace that respects how children actually develop. The model works. The operations, though, were running on software that had no idea a school like ROOTS existed.

The tools built for schools are built for school districts. The tools that are the right size — summer camp software, daycare platforms — are built for the wrong thing. Neither understands a small school with a non-traditional assessment model, a mix of programs, and real administrative complexity underneath a community-first ethos.

ROOTS needed something built for ROOTS.

What we built

Working in collaboration with Freedom to Launch, we built the ROOTS Admin Portal — a full-stack React web application that handles every layer of running the school, without the bloat of a district-scale system or the limitations of a summer camp tool.

The platform covers:

Students & programs — complete student profiles, household and family linking, enrollment tracking across programs, and attendance with undo capabilities.

Finances — a full payment portal with Stripe integration, automated recurring tuition billing, invoice generation, grant and donation tracking, and expense management. Set up a payment schedule once and let it run.

Staff & permissions — a role-based permission system with granular controls across four categories (financial, admin, education, general), leave tracking, performance reviews, and a staff feedback system. Staff see exactly what they need; nothing they don't.

Classroom tools — rubric-based assessments built for flexibility (not standardized testing), lesson planning with a shared resource library, student narrative documentation, and progress reports families can actually read.

Communications & safety — messaging for staff-to-staff and staff-to-parent, announcement broadcasting, structured incident reporting, and daily site safety checks for compliance documentation.

Reporting — enrollment analytics, financial dashboards, assessment progress tracking, and custom report builders.

The whole system is built around one principle: admins should be able to step into day-to-day operations seamlessly, while staff only ever see what's relevant to their role.

Why it matters

The software gap for alternative and microschools is real. The tools that exist were designed for different contexts — and when you try to force them to fit, you end up spending more time working around the software than using it.

ROOTS went from that frustration to a platform that understands what they actually do: a forest school with real programs, real families, real financials, and a philosophy about learning that deserves tools built to match it.

Built with: React (Replit), in collaboration with Freedom to Launch