How Independent Schools Can Know Where Their Students Are... In Real Time

Why real-time attendance is the foundation for student safety, proactive care, and faster emergency response

In independent schools today, the duty of care has never been higher, or more complex. With students moving between classes, boarding houses, athletic fields, off-campus trips and more, knowing where every student is, at any moment, isn’t just helpful.

It’s critical.

But most schools still operate largely in the dark. They're using static lists, siloed systems, or roll-call data that’s delayed by hours (sometimes days). So when an emergency strikes or a student attendance or behavioral pattern needs attention, they’re playing catch-up instead of acting fast.

At Orah, we believe that schools deserve better tools - tools that provide real-time visibility over student locations, enable shared awareness across teams, and help schools deliver proactive care.

Here’s how we do it.

Step 1: Connect Your SIS and Unlock Attendance Visibility

We start by connecting to your school’s existing Student Information System (SIS) like Blackbaud, Veracross, Synergetic or FACTS. Why? Because your SIS already holds valuable data about schedules, students, and classes. But it wasn’t built for real-time attendance.

With Orah, that data flows into an environment that’s designed for speed, usability, and action. Within hours of integration, you can:

• See your current attendance records in a clean, visual dashboard
• Filter attendance trends by division, grade, or student group
• Track issues like unexplained absences or repeat tardiness
• Surface patterns you may have missed... without running reports

No extra work required. Your data starts working harder for you from Day 1.

Step 2: Set Up Attendance Concerns & Alerts

With the foundation in place, we help your school configure Attendance Concerns — smart rules that flag at-risk students based on the patterns you define.

For example:

• “Alert us if a student is late 3+ times in 2 weeks.”
• “Flag students with more than 5 unexplained absences within a month.”
• “Notify advisors if a boarding student skips check-in.”

Alerts are sent in real-time to the right staff — Deans, Heads of House, Advisors — by email, SMS, or in-app. This allows your school to move from monitoring attendance to acting on it early.

Why it matters

Identifying attendance patterns is the first step in identifying future wellbeing & academic risks. Often, attendance is the earliest and most visible symptom of disengagement, stress, or something deeper.

Step 3: Build Toward Real-Time Attendance Workflows

Making accurate, up-to-the-minute student records part of everyday life

Once schools have their Attendance Insights and Alerts in place, the next step is operational: getting real-time attendance data flowing in as students move. This is where the full power of Orah becomes clear — not just as a roll-taking tool, but as a multi-source attendance engine that brings together teachers, students, and parents to build a live picture of student whereabouts.

Here’s how we help you build that ecosystem:

✅ Teachers: Roll-Taking Built for Accuracy and Ease

Teachers (and substitutes) can take roll from anywhere:

• On a laptop, tablet, or phone
• Directly inside their SIS or LMS via our Orah Roll Checks Chrome Extension
• During class, activities, advisory, or boarding check-ins

They can:

• See who’s expected in class (pulled from scheduled leave passes)
• Mark students present, absent, late, or excused
• Add notes or context as needed
• Launch an “In Progress” roll if they forgot to do it at the start of class

All of this data flows instantly to dashboards and alerts -- no waiting, no chasing.

🧍 Students: Check Themselves In From Kiosks or NFC Tiles

Orah empowers students to contribute too:

• Kiosk check-ins: Used in dorms, dining halls, and shared spaces
• NFC Tiles: Tap to check in/out from approved locations (e.g. gym, classrooms, music room, library)
• Mobile App: Students can self-check-in if arriving late or back from leave (with approvals)

This helps boarding staff, security teams, and activity leaders maintain accurate real-time records — even outside the classroom.

🧑‍💼 Parents: Real-Time Leave Passes, No Office Calls

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Parents can notify the school when their child is going to be absent or late via a loginless digital form that:

• Syncs directly with the student's live attendance status
• Automatically updates the relevant staff
• Provides context so admins and Deans don’t need to follow up

Gone are the days of scattered voicemails, emails, or untracked notes. Passes are:

• Fully trackable
• Approvals and notifications are automated
• Visible on the same screen teachers use to take roll

This three-way collaboration — faculty, students, parents — means that attendance isn’t just captured once a day. It’s continuously updated.

The Result: A Live, Unified Record of Student Movements

With these workflows in place, your school can:

• Identify gaps or anomalies in real time
• Reduce errors and double-handling of data
• Provide campus-wide visibility to those who need it (e.g. Deans, Boarding Staff, Security)

This isn’t just better attendance.
It’s the foundation for fast, confident emergency response — and a more proactive approach to student care.

And best of all?

It’s built into the daily rhythms of your school, so you don’t need to overhaul how your people work.

You just need to make the switch to a system that works in real time.

Step 4: Prepare for the Unexpected with Real-Time Emergency Rolls

With real-time attendance established, schools can now layer in Orah for Emergencies — a critical tool built to help schools account for every student faster and more accurately during drills, lockdowns, or evacuations.

Other school safety platforms only activate after a crisis hits.Orah gives you real-time visibility before, during, and after—because it’s built on live attendance data, not static records.

Here’s how it works:

• Designated staff can launch an emergency roll from any device.
• The roll is pre-filled with the latest attendance and location data.
• Staff can filter by last known location or expected absences.
• Students can check in themselves if safe.
• Parents can be notified as soon as their child is marked safe.

What makes Orah's approach different?

We’re not showing you yesterday’s list or data from your SIS that hasn’t updated in hours. We show you live student locations, based on real-time attendance data already being captured throughout the day.

This drastically reduces resolution time and ensures no student is left unaccounted for.

In Summary: Real-Time Attendance Is About More Than Just Roll Call

Most attendance systems were built for recordkeeping. Orah was built for action.

By helping independent schools move from static systems to live visibility, Orah enables your team to:

• Reduce admin burden and manual errors
• Catch student wellbeing issues earlier
• Respond to emergencies with confidence

Real-time attendance isn’t just about compliance — it’s the first building block of Proactive Care. And we’ll help you build it, one step at a time.

Want to see what real-time attendance looks like in action?

👉 Schedule a demo or ask us how your school can trial Orah’s Attendance Insights & Alerts today.

Because the better you see, the faster you can act.