Transcription
And learn from all of this. So, I will start by saying welcome early adopters. Uh, all of you are just by being here. So, thank you. Really excited to have this crew here as Kayla said. Um, everyone here is now in Assembly by Skola's early access club, we can call it. Um, so we are showing you today what you're going to have access to. And really our two goals with early access are number one, uh, we want to help strengthen your school's enrichment programming or your organization if you're not out of school. Um, and in appreciation for your partnership, want to really cut costs for your organization as much as possible. Um, and then number two, uh, through this program, we're going to be gaining valuable feedback to make Assembly the best it can be and so that it can have as much of an impact on your organization and your community as possible. So, thank you.
With that, we're going to start by telling you who the heck is talking to you. Uh, starting with Kayla.
Yeah. So, if you guys uh don't know me, I recognize a ton of the names in here, but my name is Kayla. I am the community manager here at Skola. So, what that means is I get to do a little bit of everything. Um my role is really a lot in content creation and marketing but also just making sure that we are creating a community with school leaders that is welcoming and is providing you with all the resources that you need to succeed. So I've been on this team for over four years now. Um so I really really know a lot of the schools um well that we work with and have just a big really heart for charter schools and private schools and all the school choice um that's out there. So, I'm super excited to be part of this team today to talk about Assembly and what the heck it is and how it's really going to benefit your school.
Awesome. I would love to to pass it to DJ um our chief product officer next.
Thanks, Kayla. Uh so, as Cayla mentioned, my name is DJ. I am our chief product officer at Skola. Uh I joined close to about three years ago. Um when I joined initially, I actually came in as our chief customer officer. So, I oversaw uh I didn't know a lot of the names, but I oversaw our relationship with a lot of our school leaders that are here today, as well as our parent outreach organization. So, I got a really really deep uh intricate view at the intimate challenges that all of our school leaders are facing both macro and uh locally at their uh in their communities. Shifting over into chief product officer, I oversee the development of the technology and the solutions that you guys will actually be receiving, including uh our new Assembly product that I'm excited to talk about. Um, and just for some context into my background, prior to joining Skola, my background was actually in applied AI and machine learning. So, while it is a hot topic now, it's something that I kind of was doing before it was uh as cool as it might sound today. Uh, I was doing it when it was a little less cool. So excited to to show you guys what we're working on here on the school side.
And you all get a chance to see inside of DJ's brain a little bit today. Um glad glad he's one of us. Uh and I'm I'm Ben Welbborne. I'm CEO of Skola. I joined about nine months ago. Uh my entire career has been in the education space. I started in a charter school in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and have since uh launched and scaled different organizations in early childhood and preK through 12 and higher education as well. It's good to be back in in K12. I think it's the the messiest, most beautiful segment of education and has the potential to have the greatest impact not just on individual human lives, but uh on entire communities. So, I'm really really pleased with the team here and everything that we're building and yeah, excited to show it to you today.
Um, so we're going to we're going to give a little brief background. The the best thing today is going to be seeing um Assembly itself and and what you're going to have access to. Um, but wanted to share a little background on Skola and why we built this. Skola has served pre-K through 12 schools uh for about 9 years now supporting student enrollment and retention and therefore the financial health of schools. Um we have nine years of data that very loudly show uh that offering enrichment programs is the best way for a school organ or organization to attract and retain retain students and their families. Um, the more you have reasons for families to walk in the building and do more than sit at a desk during the school hours, uh, the more likely they are to enroll and the more likely they are to stick around because you're serving the whole family in that way. Um, so we wanted to really double down and help schools follow best practices and ultimately become the gravitational pull of their entire community. the more you're offering programs like this, the more you are going to be the center of town in a lot of ways. Um, and then, you know, without going any into any specifics or or any digs, we did a lot of research. We talked to many of you all over the country and heard a lot of frustrations and and unfortunately the bar is pretty low for for the support out there um supporting organizations with their enrichment program. So, we aim to raise the bar a ton and we're going to do that with your help. So thank you again.
Um and then why why the name? Uh naming is always a challenging thing. So we kicked around a lot of different possibilities and everything. One uh the word Assembly is a group of people gathered together for a common purpose. It's the act or process of assembling and coming together. And I think especially post COVID that is a really valuable important thing to do. Um and it's a complete unit made by putting parts together. And you'll see in the live reveal today that this platform will help you put all of the parts of your school together to create something even more impactful. So, um there's also a growing trend of assembly education. That's actually a term now where families are constructing their own comprehensive educational experience across different programs and across even different institutions too. So, uh, we fit squarely in that and are going to help you really seize on that in your community. And then also, if you were a, I don't know, B minus student like me, Assembly day at school was the best day of school because you got to get out and change pace for a little bit. Um, so, ironically, I'm I'm back in the education space.
All right, so with that, uh, we're going to dig into it and I'm going to turn it over to DJ to show you what we have for you.
Great.
Give me just one second. pull up my screen. There we go. Great. Can everyone uh see my screen? Or Kayla, Ben, can you guys confirm that you guys can see my screen?
Awesome.
Um, so for everyone here, I I want to orient you around how we'll kind of go through both sides of the platform. Uh, there is a parent or participant side of the platform and then there is obviously a school or organization side of the platform. So, you're going to see both of those today. Uh, I'm going to go through the organization side first and then show you the participant side and what that portal looks like. I'm going to be going through this um kind of focused on the demo. So, if there's any questions, as Kayla mentioned before, please throw them into the chat by all means. Uh, Cayla will be keeping an eye out and if I need to stop and dive into anything, I'm happy to do so. So, first we've got this lander page here. Um, this will orient you around the core features that you'll see when you first go into our organization side of the platform. You're going to notice that you've got, like Ben said, a end-to-end um, building blocks for managing your program and the facilities associated with it. So, you'll be able to ideate and create programs from scratch or be able to add in your existing programs that you may already be running. Um, you'll also be able to set up your payment processing so that parents can then pay for programs um seamlessly and it get directly connected to your program and the corresponding site or organization. Um, you'll have a robust analytics dashboard that we're still fine-tuning, but you'll be able to see real-time enrollment tracking, revenue forecasting, as well as some custom reporting tools. The parents uh, and participants will have a program marketplace which will allow them to see all programs in their area. look for recommendations for programs in their area as well as be able to uh view a dedicated program page that is just for your organization or your school. Right? So, you'll not only be able to have organic parents who are just searching for programs in the community, but you'll also be able to share direct links to your existing families and say, "Hey families, check out this link that we have. This is our new program page or program profile." You'll also be able to have communication tools. We have a ton already, right? You guys don't need to be inundated with more communication tools. But outside of communicating via SMS and email, which our platform will be able to do, you'll also be able to communicate directly in platform just in case a parent wants to communicate via the secured channel within the platform itself. And then we've got some incredible AI powered tools. Um, I'm probably going to oversimplify it, but there are many agentic systems that are working in the background here that are pulling the appropriate levers to ensure that we find the right grant opportunities and funding opportunities for your program and for your organization as well as be able to speed up the proposal generation process. So, instead of you having to, you know, see the uh see the grant or funding opportunity and then have to do the research and write what that proposal needs to look like, we're going to give you a step up and accelerate that for you. So, I'll be showing you that as well in a in a bit. Going down again, we'll have in-app messaging, email, and SMS as we talked about, as well as an interactive calendar for you to be able to uh download events directly to your calendar, including facilities um facilities openings and facility schedules. So, this is going to be uh some interesting features to show you guys here soon. Before I hop in, I'm going to just take a quick look at the chat, make sure there's no initial questions.
Full results right now and I'm seeing that a lot of you guys are struggling with promoting programs effectively to families um tracking their impact on your retention and your funding and also managing your facilities, your staffing, your scheduling and resources. So already just from the poll I can tell that this is going to be really helpful for a lot of you guys out there.
Perfect. Thanks for that Kayla. So, first when you first log into your organization dashboard, we'll say that this is for Skola Academy, my madeup school, uh, where I am managing 16 different programs actively today. When you land on the dashboard, you're going to get a snapshot of how many active participants do I have across all of my active programs. Uh, how many active programs do I currently have today that are active versus draft versus published, as well as your revenue from the last 90 days and how that is trending. We're also going a little bit deeper to provide a uh analysis on this dashboard so that you can see okay how is this trending versus the previous period versus um the last 90 days the last 30 days and am training up or down and at what percentage. When you click this this is also going to be directing you directly to the report and analytics feature that we talked about before. But back to our main dashboard here you'll also have a staff utilization uh component. This staff utilization component allows you to add staff members or vendors in case they aren't necessarily an employee of your school. Vendors that are going to be helping and supporting you facilitate those programs. This is just for you to be able to see who is working on what and why. Right? We're also adding the ability with those staff members to be able to dictate if they have a background check completed or not, if that background check is pending, so on and so forth, so that you don't assign the wrong staff member or a staff member that maybe is not prepared or equipped to run that program at that time. Scrolling down the dashboard, you're going to get a a chart that shows you your program activity. So week over week or month over month or the last 90 days, you'll be able to see how many of my active programs are actually seeing capacity increases. Excuse me, not capacity increases, but participant increases. Uh, how how are we tracking towards our goals that we've set up for each program's uh participant count, etc. Looking at program performance on this dashboard is going to give you a snapshot of two things. You're going to see the category, which category is performing well. So, is it my STEM programs? Is it my leadership programs? Uh, is it my coding programs, my robotics programs? Where do I maybe need to pour more fuel on the flame versus where do I maybe need to pull back and say, "This is not a program that seems to resonate within my community." You'll be able to see that directly here at a glance to know where where you're having the most success across your programs and categories. Scrolling down a little bit further on the dashboard here, you're going to have your revenue analytics. Again, this is letting you know how much revenue we're actually seeing month over month from all of our programs as well as the average program value that we're seeing across all of our programs. On the right, again, this gives you a little bit more granularity as far as the roles that are assigned and what their utilization is. Are they assigned do they have a capacity of four programs and they're currently looking to be assigned to five and they're over capacity? do they have a bit more um a bit more bandwidth to take on additional programs, responsibilities, etc. At the very bottom here, you'll have upcoming events. This is for you to manage any sort of internal calendar invites, internal events or external and be able to download this directly to your personal calendar at your school. And then we have our send announcement functionality directly here on the dashboard. So, at a glance when you're on this page, if you need to send a marketing blast to your uh participants, if you need to send a quick message in app to all of your staff members that have access to the program's platform, you can do that directly here. And those staff members who are in the platform will actually get a notification that a message has just been sent from the site admin.
Moving on to the programs functionality, unless Kayla, you tell me to stop because there's a question.
All good.
Awesome.
So, moving on to the main uh kind of meat and potatoes here, the programs management flow. As you guys can see here, I've got quite a few different programs that I have created over the course of uh building and testing and showcasing this to uh various stakeholders. But I want to start from scratch here to show you how this would actually flow if you were looking to create a program uh from scratch. So again, uh as you saw in the statistics here, some of you are already running many programs, but many of you also um would like to have a more streamlined way to structure, create, or even ideate around the type of programs that you'd like. So let's see here. I saw we have some folks from Houston, Texas. So cool. Let's do that. So I could re-enter a program that I already have created, but we're going to assume that I don't have a program just yet. and I have an idea for a program. So, starting here, I'll say my program is going to be in the state of Texas. It's going to be in the city of Houston and I'm looking to have a program for high schoolers in the summer. Uh, I'd love if maybe even some of our participants in here could even throw out uh in the chat just a main theme for a program. I tend to default to robotics because I've done this demo quite a few times. So, I'd love for for anyone uh to throw out maybe a theme of a program that maybe you're considering right now.
If we don't, then
feels like an improv show.
It is. It is an improv show.
Let's see. Maybe I can maybe I can call on my my Texas native here. Um Matt.
There you go.
3D printing. Ah, okay. That that's a really good one. Um, 3D printing. Let's do 3D printing and we'll do um and then we'll do leadership, right? So, we're dealing with high schoolers who are maybe interested in 3D printing and we want to structure a program that is around 3D printing as well as leadership. And I'll switch it over just a bit here so that it's leadership with 3D printing as a specialized focus. And we'll do it to be a 3 to six weeks project. And I'm looking for just three ideas. And so, right now, there's magic happening, right? so to speak. But what's really happening here are multiple agents working in the background, multiple AI and large language models working in the background specifically serving certain needs. So one is looking at the demographic information and the household median income information for the city of Houston. Now granted, the city of Houston is a large one, so there's going to be a wide range of of economic, you know, ceilings, right? But generally speaking, it's looking for those demographic information, that demographic information, academic information, and the trends that we see in the city of Houston to then structure a compelling program idea. So, as you guys can see here, we've got Leaders of Tomorrow 3D Quest. Uh, it gives us a compelling description here. Embark on a thrilling journey with Leaders of Tomorrow 3D Quest, where teams step into the role of a team leader to innovate with 3D printing technology. I see a note here. doesn't need to be state specific or it can be nationwide. It could definitely be nationwide as well. Uh, sorry about that. So, as you can see, we've got a pretty structured um idea for a 3D printing/leadership program on this first one here. It includes program highlights, gives you some ideas of things to consider as you're structuring the program, hand-on 3D printing lessons, key activities, project-based 3D printing challenges, team leadership workshops, peer feedback sessions, and innovative strategy presentations. Moving down, we've got another idea, a 3D a 3D leadership lab. This one's a little bit shorter, but it has some similar program highlights and learning outcomes that we're looking for. And then we've got a third one here because of my uh my criteria to search for just three. Let's go with this first one. So on this first one, I can actually use this idea. And if you notice, we're right back into the program creation flow. And now those details are already entered into the create new program mode.
All one last call to complete the poll before we close it. Perfect. So, some of the features that we're still or some of the capabilities that we're still working on today is to take the age group, the uh the program type, the schedule type, and pre-populate that so that users users don't have to go in and customize unless they need to, but they don't have to. But for now, in this, you'll see here, I'll re-enter some of these details and I'll move pretty quickly. I'm selecting a facility. So, I've already set up my facilities on a separate page, which I'll show you guys here in a second. But for now, I've already got these facilities set up. I'm going to select the STEM learning center, and it validates the capacity of this facility as well as the schedule. Right? So it will not let me create this program for a facility that does not have the capacity needed for my program as well as the assets or it being available for the date range of my program. Right? So we are doing conflict management in the background here to avoid booking over booking or misbooking any facility. So at this stage we've got kind of the the bones of our program name description high uh high school age group. We've got program capacity. We can enable a wait list if we would like, but for mine, I'm not going to. Now, we're on the program image. We recommend that school leaders upload, as you guys know, upload real photos of their programs with engaging copy and engaging media that show real families and events and activities. But let's say again, we're creating this from the beginning and we don't have uh those photos just yet. So, we have an Unsplash integration which allows you to use um without any issues. It's the main thing here is to ensure that we showcase who the photographer is. Um, but you can now pick very professional photos here from this library of Unsplash. So, let's see. Ours was 3D printing, right? So, we'll say 3D printing. Great. So, we can select this image and this will now be the the image of our program until we go and add some uh some additional ones. Once we go into the program type, we'll select our program type. We we do try to already assign a program type based on what it is. For this one, I'll do STEM. And now we're on the schedule. The schedule piece is where it's critical and crucial to make sure you enter in all of the details. And we're currently working on a way to ensure that it's a little bit more fine-tuned and a little bit more fluid for you to be able to enter these details. But we do offer different types of schedules in different type of session formats based on your program type. Right? So for this one, we'll say lab sessions. I'm going to start this uh September all the way through October. and we'll say it's Monday at 8:00 a.m. 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. and we'll say there are eight sessions, one per week. Now, we're on the pricing side. Again, we're take we're going to be taking the AI generated pricing and pre-populating it in here, but still encouraging each of you to go in and verify if that is the right pricing that you would like to uh assign to this program. So for this I'll say
if if I can just jump in. One way to think about this is is in the back end it's doing a complete market analysis for you on what there's demand for in your area and what the market can bear if you are going to add a a fee or a tuition to the program.
Exactly. Exactly. And again, you know, depending on it's going to going to be looking at the city. It's going to be looking at the market, the program type, right? um the type of assets and uh amenities that might need to be included as a part of this and structuring a recommended price um from those data points. Once we get into the second to last section here is FAQs, right? Every parent or participant is going to have questions about your program, but you may not know what those questions are because you haven't quite done the program just yet. So, we do incorporate our AI agents into this part of our flow as well. And again, when you click this, what's actually happening is it's taking all of the context that we've created up through this point, as well as now introducing another LLM, large language model in the background to now take all of that and structure engaging questions and their answers so that when parents or participants view your program, they have the FAQs front and center and the answers front and center. So, this takes about 45 seconds. Um, but once it's done, here we go. Once it's done, you can see that there are nine FAQs now which cover the eligibility requirements. It covers how the program is structured. Again, all based on the data points that we already entered so the information is accurate. The very last one here comes from um this was actually feedback from some of our early stakeholders as we talked about this. How can I talk to my child about the program to get them excited? So each program that is generated and each FAQ that is generated will automatically come with a talk track of how to talk to your child about this based on their age range, based on the topics, based on the uh theme that we said. So I'll import this and now I've got all of my FAQs here with their appropriate answers. The very last section here to create the full program is the forms. What forms are responsible uh or what forms are are necessary for a participant to actually get
can you can you still edit those?
Uh Beth, absolutely. Are you talk I imagine you're talking about the FAQs. You can edit those directly here. So when they're generated, you have them, but if you want to change the question or change the answer in any way, you can edit those directly. And having having uh created programs myself in the past, this saves hours because you're going to have to think in the in the mind of a parent and a student and all the things that they're going to want or need and then come up with each of the answers and be thorough. So in I mean you saw DJ do it in real time. getting that framework and then yes, editing them to make them more specific to your needs uh is a huge timesaver and you don't have to iterate and and say let me get back to you with parents because you didn't think of a a question.
Absolutely. Yeah, thanks Ben and thanks Beth for that question too. So the very last page here up excuse me oops sorry about that. The very last page here will be the uh required enrollment forms. So what forms are necessary for a participant to actually join for this program? So you can select here which programs and we're building out the capability to also create more for uh more programs or forms that excuse me not programs more forms that you would need for your programs um in a different flow. But for now we are setting some required pre preset forms that you can select and edit and say that these need to be included and then every parent as they go to participate in that has to complete that form as part of participating in the program. down to the required staff count. So again, we want to make sure that we are assigning the appropriate staff members to the program so we can manage our utilization. Here I've got, you know, I could say four, five, six, seven staff members. It will do a validation to ensure I have the appropriate number of staff members assigned to this program so that we don't understaff um adequately for the program. In this case, I'll say four. I've got my four and I can also assign more by by the selected staff members that I have available as well as their roles based on what I've added into the staff section here. Once that program is created, then I have the opportunity to either publish it, leave it as a draft. If I publish it, it's then available for uh parents to see. I can also publish it privately, right? What does that mean? That means I have a private link that I can share with my existing student uh student body. I can share with uh potential families. Uh I could even share and say, "Hey, this link is a link that gives you the program for free, right? Or a discount code associated with that." So, we do allow for you to have a draft stage, we have a published stage that is public, and then we have a published stage that is private as well for each of your programs.
Before I move into uh a couple of the other features, is there any initial questions?
See?
Yeah. And I'm also going to take this time um I just wanted to highlight one from the past poll. Um it seemed like a lot of you guys had questions one about or challenges rather with scheduling and managing all those facilities. So super cool what you've built DJ of how it automatically knows um and doesn't let you schedule things that it knows logistically are not going to work. So that feature in itself I think will be really helpful. But one of our biggest things that we were seeing is promoting your program. So, as we're talking about building out these programs and promotions, I did have another poll that I wanted to just get a gauge on. Hey, what is your busiest season in terms of your enrichment programs? Is it, you know, the fall is when it's really busy or maybe you guys are really great at spring programs? Um, and how are you currently promoting that? Um, in terms of when are you starting that promotion? So, I'm going to go ahead and launch that poll as well. um now that you've seen um what it you know how you're actually building out programs here.
Thank you, Kayla. Appreciate that. Uh awesome. So, I'll I'll touch through a couple of other clicker pages. Uh again, the staff management page is simply for you to add staff members. You can also invite them to the platform so that they can have a read-only view. But generally, think of this as being um maybe a teacher who is assisting with a program. but it could also be a vendor. It could also be a third-party person who is not necessarily an employee of the school but is going to be serving uh the program in some capacity. You want to make sure that you're able to manage that as well as manage whether they have a background check completed or other certifications that might be needed as well. Getting into the enrollments management section here. This section allows for you to see end to end how many total enrollments you have. if you're looking at your active participants, have they paid, um what's their payment status, when did they start, um etc. So, this is going to be a section where many of you will be spending uh quite a bit of time. And we're breaking this out into different sections here where you can see your current enrolled uh participants. You can see upcoming, meaning they have uh requested interest but haven't necessarily paid fully just yet. Right? Then you have past. This would be your participants who have either unenrolled or maybe refunded or canceled in the background or canceled canceled in the in the past. Uh as well as like I said all of them if you need a end-to-end robust look at any enrollment that you've ever had in any of your programs throughout the year. The messages section is where you can expect to send back and forth communication between parents or participants who are curious about a program. Again, you can look at a program and say, "Ah, this is interesting. I would love to enroll, but I have a question." Right? A parent can then request information and that will go directly to the organization that has uh that has created the program. Excuse me. So, as you can see here, I've got some real ones here that show uh Lisa Johnson requesting information. She says, "Test, test, test, test, test." But she was requesting information about this particular robotics program, and I was able to respond and say, "Thanks for your interest. the program suitable for children's eight and above etc. Right? So this is a communication channel again that's directly in the application. So if someone requests information just from the app, you can communicate that directly through here in addition to still sending SMS and emails and drip campaigns.
One thing worth flagging for larger schools and districts, if you already have a communication platform and you don't want redundancy, this can be toggled off. So, we're not we're not splitting attention span across multiple platforms for you.
I saw a question from Thanks for that, Ben. You're you're entirely right. This is the communication channel uh is generally optional, right? With the exception of if a parent requests information directly on the program, that is going to go into here um for the program, right? But there's some there definitely some some flexibility and control around there. Amy, you said uh do you have interfaces with school databases? I love this question. So we do have interfaces with school databases. Um all 95% of all primary SIS um platforms will have complete integrations with so that we can ingest existing student uh student body and be able to help to promote your existing programs or your new created newly created programs to that existing student body as well. Um on the accounting side, Blackbaud absolutely as well and Veracross. So we do have that integration. We we actually secured an an earlier back-end kind of model and integration earlier this year. Um so we're excited to bring that into this side of our platform as well.
And we just sent out some promotion about this integration and I'll send the link right here. These are all of the platforms where we we integrate.
Exactly.
All of all of these and counting. There are more more coming.
Absolutely. Uh so this calendar here is you know you guys have already got a a plethora of events on your calendars I am sure but in case you need uh to kind of compartmentalize certain things you can bring your calendar into the platform and see events on your calendar in the app as well as export those events into an IC format which is just a standard calendar format so you can download it directly to your existing local calendar as well. Now we're on the funding and grant side. this this particular functionality may not be relevant for every organization type depending on the type of organization you are it may not be as relevant um but given that we do also largely work we work largely with charter schools as well it has been something that has come up quite often uh given the macroeconomic landscape so what we've added here is a very robust agentic system that scrapes the web it is looking for live funding opportunities that are still actively available and it's also tying your school and if you would like a specific program to that funding opportunity. So, I want to show you guys this. You can search by specific grant if you already are aware of a grant that is available or you can just do a general search. So, for me, I'll do general search. I'll attach it to my robotics program that I created a while back and I'll search nationwide and I just need three results. So, I'd actually already scraped uh had already run this right before I started this. So, as you can see, if you've already run it, it will save if you run it in the last 10 minutes, it will actually save your response if you look at the exact same filters so that it doesn't have to re-query all of that again for you. So, you can pick up where you left off. So, I've got the education, innovation, and research program. I can save this directly to my saved programs. And once it's saved to my programs, uh, saved to my grants, I can go a step further and say, "This is awesome. I like this. I would like to now generate a proposal for this again to give me a leg up on getting this funding into my school. So, I'm going to attach it to my robotics club. But again, it doesn't have to be. I could actually assign I could actually attach any program to this proposal. But for this case, I want to do it for my robotics club at this time. Now, as you have you talked about, you've kind of seen the theme here, a multi- a uh agent agentic system in the background. It is now working with those that we were working with earlier and is now creating a proposal based on all of those other inputs, the program inputs, the grant uh finding sourcing inputs, the details about my organization inputs, and it's creating a compelling um proposal while also highlighting key areas that you may want to alter. Right? So, as you can see here, we specify outcomes. I highlight this automatically so that it encourages the user to go in and make some adjustments. Right? Um if I scroll down here 20%. For every single proposal there needs to be quantifiable and uh quantifiable metrics and a methodology. We are proposing those on behalf of you the user based on the details that were entered in the program in the school etc. However, we highlight the key details so that you know this might be relevant for you you to go and update. Right? How would I update it is the very next question. We have a what you see what you get uh proposal editor here. You can then click each section in the proposal and actually edit this real time directly on here. So, as you can see here, I can type anything that I would like and actually save this as the proposal and export this out into a PDF, into a Google sheet, into a word document, or share it amongst my team members um to get their feedback as well.
Any initial questions before I move on? Or Kayla, did you have any um
a last call for their the existing poll that is up? Um, if you guys want to let us know about your promotion of your programs and when your busiest season is, definitely jump into that poll.
Great. Thanks, Kayla. So, the very last thing I I'll show you here, which is which is kind of the um kind of the capstone to the organization side of the platform is the facility management. So, again, you can give a name. So, for me, I'll say it's just the gym. That's probably not a good way since it's more of a facility type. I'll say gym A and then it allows me to pick the facility type. Is it a classroom? Is it an auditorium? Is it a library? Uh, a laboratory, a conference room, etc. So here I'll pick gym and as we talked about this is actually defining the criteria which makes this eligible to be selected um in my program. So I can also give it a description and the most important thing is the ability to select the amenities as well as add custom ones which we're working on right now. But we are predefining some core amenities so that you again don't select a facility that doesn't have the amenities needed to effectively um handle the program that you're running there. We also have operating hours. So, we're defining some predefined operating hours that you can select, but you can also go and customize specifically the operating hours for that program with the ability to download that schedule directly to your local school calendar um or any calendar that you have. Once that program is select uh created, then it's here in your facilities management for it to be selected as part of the program creation flow. And then the last page is just um all of our AI agents that are working in the background. You also can go to our AI assistant tools here and work with each one specifically. There are a couple that are not shown here because they're a bit more in the background, but these are some of the core ones which you can just select specifically and say maybe there's a child that's directly in front of you that you're working with who has an interest and you just want to figure out which of your programs is going to be best for them. You can actually use the AI program matcher and it will quickly look at all of your programs so that you can recommend that program in front of that parent or participant. And now we've got about what 18 minutes here. Got about 18 minutes. I'm switching over to Excuse me. I'm going to stop sharing my screen real quick just so I can log out. the Zoom button blocks my log out.
We're going to jump into now our parent side of things. So, um that was actually the biggest um challenge that a lot of you guys were facing was getting promotion out and getting parents to sign up for your program. So, I definitely think that the parent interface is really that main solution for you guys. So, definitely really excited to dive into this one.
Perfect. Then I I'll be respectful of time because I'd like to leave some some questions uh some time for some questions uh with you guys as well. So from the parent side, when a parent logs in, a parent may say, "Okay, I just want to know what programs are out there, right?" So a parent could simply browse the entire program marketplace. Um it's a bit of a uncontrolled way to do it, but if they were in the community and simply just wanted to know what programs are in my community, this is a way that they could do it. They could simply search by local schools. They could search by the state. They could search by cities. They could search by age uh categories. Or they could simply say, you know, my child is interested in robotics. Find perfect programs. And we'll use our AI agent to actually find the perfect programs that are recommended for them based on that. But the initial flow is that a parent will want to create a child. Maybe create a child is the wrong word. they'll want to add their child um that they have already created into the platform. As you can see here, I already have two children in here. I've got myself who is 6 years old and then I have Sophia Johnson, uh who is five, right? So, when I go in here, I then can edit any of these details about my child. And we're still fine-tuning the UI a bit, but you can see here I have all of the details. I have emergency contact, additional notes, interest, medical information, uh, as well as their age, gender, date of birth, and grade level. Once my child is added, that's when it really becomes the ability for me to search based on that. So, I'll search Donaldson and say my child loved robotics. And what this is doing now is looking at all those details very similar to how we did it before for the school side where I could search it live in front of a in front of a participant. So you can see here it describes why we recommended this one in addition to recommending some others that might have not been directly on the nose, but we're clear about why we recommended it. It's a tangential benefit through strategic thinking because we're not only looking at the fact that they say I'm into robotics, but when you're into robotics, what are the core competencies that are developed as a part of being into robotics? Strategic thinking is one of them, right? So, we do offer some other ones as well, but this is clearly the, you know, the better match. So, I could click this and now when I view this, this is the program page that I mentioned before. All of those details that we entered, the FAQ, all of those details are actually showcasing directly here on the program page. I can also see the description. I can see what to expect. I can see the age requirements. Um, as well as the additional details that we put into the entire program creation flow. From here, as a parent, I could say, "Awesome. There's 20 spots available for registration. I am excited about this. Maybe if I have more information, I could send that uh request more information. I can send that request directly through here or I can move forward with actually signing up my my child Sophia Johnson into this program. Once I select the enroll flow, if it's set up that this is actively available for enrollments and payments, I can seamlessly go through the entire payment flow as a parent directly through here. Right? So, it's very clear it's $125. I want to pay by credit card. And we've got a secure PCI compliant credit card processing in the background that is ensuring all of this is being tracked. All of it's PCI compliant. Um if there are refunds, if there are payment plans, all of that is structured within our integration. So from here, a parent can pay and they know immediately the status of their payment. The last thing I want to show you guys here is that our goal was to make this as mobile optimized for parents as possible. assuming that more times than not, our parents are going to be viewing this from their mobile devices. So, we set this up to be incredibly mobile friendly. So, as you see here, we've got a intuitive mobile interface that feels like a native mobile application even though it's still just on the web. So, a parent
can now go to discovery. They can see their kids. They can also favorite different programs that they may like. As you can see, I favored coding for kids as well as manage their messages back and forth with that organization. And going back here, the very last thing I'll say is they can manage their enrollments as well. So, as a parent, I can see any enrollments that are currently active, that are pending, or that I'm on the wait list for as well as any that I might have completed in the past.
And then moving to the very last piece here was word of mouth is bond, right? Word of mouth is king um across our enrollment sector in general. And so we are building out the referral flow for a parent to be able to generate a referral code which can be tied to your program and offer a discount for any parent or participant that they recommend. And it's a really seamless flow where they could press generate code, send to a person's email or text message number, and that person will just have to click a link to participate in that program as well with that discount code already associated with it. And I believe that is generally the end-to-end overview of both the school organization platform and the parent dashboard side of our assembly platform. and I'd love to dive into questions or additional comments.
>> And be between the platform and the um the followup. The goal on the parent side is that they know exactly what is available to them and what is expected of them so that you never have to chase a parent again. It's frictionless on form collection and the full enrollment process no matter what your your process is as well as payments. Uh, no more tracking down are they paying with a paper check or are they paying over here and do I have to have an awkward conversation with a 14-year-old about their parent needing to bring in a payment? Um, that is gone. So, the goal and and having automated reminders on each of those things as well, so the parent knows exactly what they need to do still.
>> Absolutely.
>> So, I do, we're going to pass it back to Ben real quick if you want to pull up. Um, first off, I'm going to launch this last poll here. Um, we want to know what of everything that we just shared are you most excited about? Um, what do you think is going to solve the most problems or challenges that you face? And also how this is going to help your families. Again, we are still in the process of like making it even better than it already is. So, we want to know if there are things that are really exciting you that we can lean into those more as well. But Ben, if you want to walk through um what do these next steps look like to actually be part of let's start using this platform?
>> Yeah, and I I noticed a few things in the polls that are actually really helpful and it's all it's it's added motivation for us to to get things in gear on our side. I I noticed that a bunch of you have October as the kickoff time for winter and spring semester programming. Um, we, like I said, are are working on this early uh access program. So opening this to all of you this fall. Um, certainly with plenty of lead time before Thanksgiving. We are also uh hand selecting u 12 I'll call them friends and family schools that want even earlier access where we really are leaning in together to make sure you get exactly what you need and we get earlier feedback than even the early access program. So that would be September. Um, so on your screen that QR code goes to a legally non-binding agreement. The point of that document is just that we have in writing all of the expectations. You know exactly what to expect from Skola and our team and our technology and you also know what is expected of you in this early access program. So um again, all of you already have this uh by being here today. Uh, the final step to to getting set up is uh following that QR code and I think um Kayla's putting in the chat the the link as well.
>> Um, but aside from creating something that does not end-to-end exist for schools, we're seeing in your survey results also that many of you are living out of spreadsheets at best um and in some cases living out of like six different platforms to be able to manage your back-end operations and promotion of your programs. Um, so that that was the main motivator is to create something better for all of you. Um, but we also wanted to really remove barrier to entry for any organization supporting their community. Um, I don't know how how viscerally you're all feeling current events these days, but there are a lot of developments on a weekly basis around policies and economics of educational organizations. So, you're dealing with a lot. It's hard to budget when things are wet cement under you. So the assembly platform and even more so the early access program is designed to remove all barriers. Um, and and ideally looking at this, it should not be a budget consideration at all for you in early access. So uh, we like to say that all of you can be decision makers on this. If you are overseeing or running any programs, use assembly for it. Uh, there's should not be any considerations beyond that. If there are any, please let us know. Uh, but hope to see some of these agreements coming in uh so that we can get to work with you right away. Um, so again, with early access, no subscription fee, no upfront costs at all for the entire year. Um, to cover our cost, we're looking at doing what is essentially like a credit card fee. So, uh, we'd be collecting 3% of any transactions made on the platform and you get to decide if that's, uh, you know, from the parent or the participant or if it's from the program. Um, but we're going to roll up our sleeves with you and make sure that this is really no barrier to entry for you. Um, and that we're not doing any changes on that, too. That's that's our commitment to you. So, um, yeah, really really excited that you're all here and really really excited to start working with you. Again, this is releasing this fall um and even earlier uh for for some of you. So, if you feel like you are friends and family of Skola, we do have a couple more spots on this even earlier access. So, please reach out, get loud uh so that we can set up an account with you very soon.
>> Yeah, in these last six or so minutes. And honestly, if you guys have more questions, we will stay on with you. um want to open up the floor to any questions that you have or anything that you're like, hey, this is a really specific challenge that I'm dealing with at my school and this is how I saw assembly might be able to solve that or if you didn't see a solution to that. Um, just bringing those challenges to our attention because again, we're trying to make sure that we're hitting all those check boxes for you guys when it comes to enrichment program management. And from our first poll, we saw that a majority of you do not have any kind of program or platform to currently run your enrichment, which means you're just doing it out of spreadsheets or on the back of, you know, some registration form or things like that. So, definitely want to open up the floor. Um, if you have any questions, any comments, um, any feedback for us, now is your time to to share that with us. And as you can see from from DJ's overview, uh it is a comprehensive really well-built platform already. The feedback you're providing in early access and then even in these polls is going to inform future development and what we should lean into even more. U, so I can see 44% of you have filled out this final poll. This one in particular is going to be super helpful. uh, it's telling us directly what you feel is the most important part of assembly so that we can continue to build that out even more so.
>> So 44% going on 100% I hope but yeah any questions we are an open book here u so would love any questions any feedback anything at all and while you're thinking uh I just want to say again thank you on August 21 of all times for joining this um, you know, our we got a fire lit under us to get this thing ready for you um in the coming weeks so that we can impact this school year or this programming cycle for you.
>> Um, and and know that you have 20 different hats that you're wearing right now. So thanks.
>> And even if you you don't have any initial questions um I I would love even just initial initial impression right for those of you who saw this for the very first time. I know we had some folks who who may have even seen it once or twice before. Um, but I would love to hear any thoughts from, you know, from the the attendees here of first impressions. Question about facilities management. Can there be a difference between what families see and what you assign at the back end? I'm thinking of summer camp with the school as a drop-off location, but a need for multiple spaces within the building to be assigned differently over the course of the camp.
>> So, Beth, I I really like this this question. Um, in in a simple way, I can definitely say we can choose which address or facility is shown to the parent. Absolutely. If that's different, if the internal administration facility is different than where it will actually be held, absolutely we can we can do that. Um, but I would I would love to maybe follow up with you to understand how you manage that today. Uh, realistically, is that just in a spreadsheet somewhere where you say, "Hey, this is our internal one." And then when we talk with parents, we just send them this other address. I'd be curious to to to hear from you on that. If we don't get to it in in the chat, do you mind if if I follow up with you directly, Beth, for that? Perfect. Yeah, thank you. Does this platform house content for a full course or virtual program? Once someone signs up for a program, what does it look like once they are actually in?
>> That's a great that's a great question as well. Also, Angelica, we we we don't have the the the parent side or participant side today is not intended to manage their their activities within within the program, right? Or or to measure, you know, are you doing X activity or or X uh item as part of the program yet. Um, it would be more so that they know that they are enrolled in a program and they're managing a little bit more of the administrative items of that program from the participant side. Is my child, you know, in this program? When is the payment due for that program? Uh, how many sessions are in that program? What's the description of each session?
>> What is the sequence of the program? And also messaging on expectations of participants. So, a lot of what we're looking at if it is a virtual program, it might be come ready tomorrow with X. Um, and that would be both in the description and then also the the automated communication um through multiple platforms. Um, but but yeah, we're not looking at this as the place to run a program specifically, all back-end operations and all communication. Yeah. But Angelica, to your point about a virtual program, yes, that can be created. And we even have uh a default field when you're assigning a facility where it's an online or virtual facility, right? And then there could be a link instead of the address, it would actually be a link to where that virtual program will actually be held.
>> So, actually Amy just brought up a really good point. Lots to think about with respect to the systems you already use. Yes, we understand that there's a lot of I keep saying platform fatigue. Organizations all have multiple platforms and they all have different contract lengths and everything else like that. That is why we are giving you this thing. We want you to just use it. And it may be you're drawn to certain elements because you have another platform currently. We want feedback period. So, um I I hope that your current platforms are not a consideration for if and why and how you would um you would engage in early access and rather that you do it because it's free and that you're going to be able to get some benefit from it because it is such a comprehensive platform. May you're maybe you're using us for for part of your your operations and it may be that over time you fall in love with it and then start to think about contract links on your other stuff. Of course. Of course. Any other reactions or uh questions? I can see we have 53% completion of our poll. So, please keep going. I had one uh come in via email from Michelle. Thank you so much for going ahead and signing thatou, but she just mentioned how their school currently has some of their own staff and some outside vendors. So, there's not a whole lot of cohesion. So, this is definitely um the type of solution that's going to help bring a lot of that together. So, we are super excited to have you on board, Michelle. Um, it's really going to be great for Woodrest.
>> Awesome.
>> Awesome. Thanks, Amy. The poll is still up. I don't know if there's a way to re send it. Kayla.
>> Um, there might be an option on your screen that says poll.
>> Um,
>> I have an end poll.
>> Don't want to do that.
>> No, don't.
>> Yeah, I think everyone um that attended can select the poll quizzes button in your Zoom window. Great.
>> And if you don't have that, you can let us know in the chat and say, "What are you most excited about?" Um, and we will take that feedback for sure.
>> Yes.
>> All right. I know we are two minutes over. As we always say, we will hang out here until we're completely alone. So, keep uh keep questions coming if you have it or feedback coming if you have it.
>> Thanks, Beth. And uh be on the lookout for an email from me.
>> Yeah. And thank you, Corey. We're excited, too.
>> Thanks, Corey. Just need some smooth jazz music to close us out.
>> That's DJ's specialty.
>> Maybe more R&B than smooth jazz, but.
>> I'll take some uh both, right? I'm in the gray.
>> Thank you, Jamie.
>> Thanks, J.
>> Information in one platform. Agreed. Yeah. Um DJ and I are both dads of little ones, but uh we are very aware that pretty soon our life is going to be full of a phone with way too many way too many platforms. So aiming to solve that.
>> Yeah. I also just want to shout out the poll right now. It seems like a big one for you guys is that parent-friendly interface. Um, which just warms my heart because that means how much you guys are thinking of your parents first. Um, that the main solution you want to find right now is, hey, how do I make it easier for parents to get involved? Um, especially when a lot of parents are working and are managing a bunch of different things. So, having a really streamlined place that they're not having to dig down different, you know, sites and links and registration forms and checks and things like that. Um, so love that. That was the big one. 75% of you said that you're really excited about that parent-friendly interface.
>> And you're also wise because you know that parents can get pretty noisy when they're not happy. So that's a that's a good place to be on the platform thing and and being in too many places. I actually had a perfect example this morning. Our son uh had a little field trip today, but they communicated about it in a place that I wasn't expecting and I drove to school. So, uh, yes, having it all in one platform is very valuable to to parents.
>> And what what one one thing I'll say about the parent experience because it it was a and it is a a crucial important piece of everything that we're building besides all of the backend information of course. Um, the the goal was to make it so that a parent or participant would basically have a mobile application without any friction of going to an app store because like Ben said, I I've got a young son and I have already have two different applications just to manage his monastery school that that he goes to right um, and personally like some sometimes parents don't necessarily myself included want to go to an app store to download an application, create an account, right? So what we're building this to be is it's just on the website but it's a fully fully mobile optimized experience that they can still download to their home screen on their iPhone or Samsung or Android and it will function solely as a mobile application but it's not a necessity right? So that that is the goal with how we're building it.
>> All right. I know we said that uh we would stay on until everybody else leaves, but I want to hear from you if you do have any other final final thoughts or questions. Otherwise, they are not final because we're going to be reaching out over the coming weeks to get um you completely comfortable and understanding what is coming for you. But some of you may be just on the road or have this in the background at this point. So, we might we might hang it up. But again, lot of gratitude. Thank you for for doing this.
>> And again, if any if you have any additional thoughts that you think of after this, uh please please feel free to email me directly. My email is very easy. It's just dj@skola.com. You can send me an email uh and I will personally make sure to respond to it and follow up.
>> We all have very easy emails. I'm kay@skola.com and we've got ben@skola.com. So.
>> But if you guys have any questions for any of us, um yeah, just let us know. We are here to support you. Again, you are our early team, our early crew. Um, so we want to make this super seamless for everybody.
>> Big things ahead. Thanks everybody. Have a great a I was about to say afternoon. Yeah, afternoon for probably half of you. All right. Thanks everybody.
>> See you all.