For K12 teachers and front office staff
ChalkHandoff holds your bell schedule, seating chart, rosters, duty rotation and emergency plans in one folder that stays current from August through June. When you call in at 5:40 in the morning, one tap sends the guest teacher a phone friendly pack and tells the front office the room is covered.
The 5:40 a.m. math
Every teacher knows the calculation. Fever, no voice, a kid at home with strep, and you still open the laptop at midnight because writing sub plans from scratch takes longer than the day you are trying to miss. Here is what that actually costs, per absence, in the four places it lands.
Bell schedule, seating chart, who leaves for speech at 10:15, what the specials rotation is on a Thursday. All of it retyped, at midnight, from memory.
3 hr 10 minMedian time teachers report writing a full day of plans from scratchA guest teacher walks into a room with no seating chart, no restroom procedure and no idea which student cannot sit next to which. The day becomes crowd control.
41 minutesInstruction lost per absence day while a sub hunts for materialsAt 6:15 the attendance secretary is printing rosters, chasing a copy code, and calling a para to cover the first twenty minutes because nothing was left on the desk.
55 minutesOf one office staff morning spent per uncovered absencePackets get handed out, not taught. You come back to a stack of half finished worksheets and a unit that slid two days to the right, again.
$142Average daily sub pay that buys almost no instructionNobody in a school building has a spare hour at 5:40 in the morning. The plan has to already exist, and it has to be current on the day you need it.
How the handoff works
You build the folder in one prep period in September. After that ChalkHandoff keeps it current from your roster feed, and every absence for the rest of the year is a tap on a phone before you go back to bed.
Enter the bell schedule, the specials rotation, the duty you cover, dismissal groups and the ten room rules a stranger would never guess. Import your class lists and seating charts, or drop in a CSV from the office.
Median setup time across 214 buildings: 43 minutes
Write a single lesson block per subject that works on any date, with the copies already attached as PDFs. Your unit plans sit alongside it, so if you know Thursday is a sick day you swap in the real lesson in about ninety seconds.
Attach copies once, reuse them all year
Pick today's date, choose the any day plan or the real lesson, and send. The guest teacher gets a link that opens on a phone with no login, the office gets a copy for the sub binder, and your grade team lead sees the room is covered.
Median time from opening the app to a sent pack: 1 minute 50 seconds
The guest teacher taps through a short end of day form: what got finished, who helped, who needs a conversation. It lands in your inbox by 3:30 and stays attached to that date in the coverage log.
78 percent of packs come back with written notes
Inside the folder
This is not a document you edit and re-save. Each part of the folder is a living record that pulls from your roster, your calendar and last week's lesson, so the version the guest teacher opens is the one that matches today.
Start from a template for your grade band, then fill it with the details a stranger needs: the reading block order, where the pencils live, which cabinet is locked. It saves as a reusable plan, not a one time document you rewrite next February.
Reusable, not disposableDrag desks into the shape your room really is, add first names in the size a sub can read from the door, and tag the quiet notes that matter: preferential seating, a reading buddy, the two students who should not share a table. Sensitive accommodations stay behind a need to know flag.
Prints on one pageOne link, sent by text or email, that opens on any phone with no account and no app store detour. It carries the schedule, the plans, the seating chart, the fire drill route, the allergy list and the dismissal groups, and it expires when the last bus pulls out.
No login for the subA full day of standards aligned work per subject that holds up on any date, with the copies already attached as PDFs the office can print at 6:30. It is the folder you send when your kid throws up at 5 a.m. and typing is not happening.
Ready before you need itClass lists, homerooms and specials rotations pull from PowerSchool, Infinite Campus, Skyward or a nightly CSV, so a January transfer student shows up on the seating chart without you touching it. Bell schedule changes for early release days follow the school calendar.
Nightly roster syncThe guest teacher answers five questions before leaving: what got taught, what got skipped, who helped, who struggled, what broke. Every absence stays in a per teacher log the principal can pull at evaluation time without asking anybody to reconstruct a date.
Written record, same dayWhat changes
These come from usage data across the 214 buildings running ChalkHandoff during the 2025 to 2026 school year, plus the exit survey we send every principal in June.
From opening the app to a pack confirmed on the sub's phone. The folder is already written, so the only decisions left are the date and which lesson block to send.
Guest teachers start at the bell instead of spending first period looking for the copies, the roster and someone who knows the dismissal groups.
One prep period, once. Teams that set up together in a September staff meeting finish faster because the bell schedule and specials rotation get entered a single time for the whole grade.
Because the link opens on a phone with no password, subs read it in the parking lot. The office sees a green check next to the room instead of chasing an unread email.
From the buildings using it
We asked three people who use ChalkHandoff on different sides of the same absence what changed. None of them were paid for these, and all three gave permission to use their names and buildings.
I taught two days with strep last winter because writing plans felt worse than standing up in front of 26 fourth graders. In February my daughter spiked a fever at five in the morning and I sent Tuesday's folder from the kitchen table before the coffee finished. The sub texted me a photo of the finished exit tickets at 2:40. That was the first sick day I actually spent lying down.
Before this I was printing folders for six rooms before seven in the morning and still had guest teachers standing at my window at 7:50 asking where the copies were. Now the packs land on my dashboard the minute a teacher calls in and I print for the two rooms that still want paper. I got about forty minutes of my morning back, every single absence day.
Our science team keeps one shared lab safety block and one bank of any day lessons, so a sub never has to guess whether seventh graders can be trusted with hot plates. The answer is no, and now it says so in bold on the first screen. When a parent asked about a March 4 incident, the sub notes were still attached to that date and the whole question took ten seconds.
Pricing
Priced the way schools actually buy. A teacher can start alone for less than a pack of dry erase markers, a grade team can share one plan bank, and a building can put every classroom on the same handoff without a per substitute fee.
One classroom, one teacher, unlimited absences.
$9 per month, per teacher
Up to eight teachers sharing a schedule and a plan bank.
$39 per month, per team
Every classroom in one building, plus the front office.
$149 per month, per building
Every plan is billed monthly in US dollars and can be cancelled at any time from the billing screen, with access running to the end of the month you already paid for. No annual contract, no setup fee, and no charge per substitute. Schools that need a purchase order and a W-9 can ask for one on the form below.
Questions we get on every demo
A single teacher pays $9 per month. A grade team of up to eight teachers is $39 per month, and a whole building is $149 per month with the front office dashboard included. Most teachers start on the $9 plan out of pocket, and about a third are reimbursed later from a classroom supply budget or a professional development line. Buildings that move to the $149 plan can pay by purchase order, and we send a signed W-9 the same week.
The median first folder takes 43 minutes, which is one prep period for most teachers. That time goes into the parts only you know: the bell schedule, the specials rotation, dismissal groups and the room rules a stranger would never guess. Rosters and seating charts come in from a CSV or your student information system, so you are not typing 26 names by hand. Grade teams that set up together in a September staff meeting usually finish in about half that, because the schedule is entered once for everybody.
We operate as a school official under FERPA, which means the student data stays the district's property and we process it only to run the service you asked for. Guest teachers see first names, seating position and the practical notes you flag as need to know, never a full student record. Handoff links expire at the end of the school day and cannot be forwarded into a new session. We do not sell data, we run no advertising trackers, and we delete a building's records within 30 days of a written request.
Yes. Rosters sync nightly from PowerSchool, Infinite Campus and Skyward on the School plan, and every plan can import the CSV your office exports in two clicks. Google Classroom links and Drive files attach straight into a lesson block, so the sub taps through to the same material your students already use. Single sign on runs through Google, Clever or ClassLink, which means nobody in the building has to invent another password.
You cancel from the billing screen whenever you want, and there is no phone call to sit through. The plan stays active to the end of the month you already paid for, then the account turns read only for 60 days so you can take everything with you. Folders, seating charts and the coverage log export as PDFs and CSVs. Teachers who change buildings often export in June and rebuild in a new room in about ten minutes.
No, and the two sit side by side without arguing. Frontline, SmartFind Express and the systems like them exist to find a substitute and record the absence for payroll, and they are good at that. None of them carry your seating chart, your reading block order, or the fact that the projector remote lives in the top left drawer. Your absence system still finds the sub; ChalkHandoff is what that sub reads once they are standing in your room.
The Sub Folder
The Sub Folder is where we publish what schools tell us about substitute coverage: the plans that survive a stranger reading them cold, the folder details everyone forgets, and the money an unfilled absence quietly costs. Here are the three most recent pieces.
practical guide
A sub plan works only if a stranger can run it without calling the office. Here is how to write a full day of instruction that stands on its own, with timing, materials, and fallbacks.
checklist
Sub folders fail in the details: no seating chart, a dead login, no bathroom policy. Work through this list once in September and it will hold up on the worst morning of the year.
regulation and compliance
Substitutes need medical alerts and accommodation notes to do the job, but not a student's full record. Here is where federal privacy law draws the line and how to build a folder on the right side of it.
Request a walkthrough
Send us your bell schedule and one grade level, and on a 20 minute call we will build a working sub folder for an actual room in your school and send the pack to your own phone so you can see what a guest teacher sees. No slide deck. If it does not fit how your office runs mornings, we will say so.
One person reads every message, usually before the last bus leaves. If a form is not your thing, write straight to jimenezjulien42@gmail.com and say which grade you teach.