Newsletters
When enabled by your school, newsletters bring general school news into Messages, with an optional email copy.
Staff open Families → Newsletters, choose a starting template, select the audience and write the sections.
Preview the edition and recipient counts, review that the news is suitable for email, then publish now or schedule it.
Parents open Messages → Newsletters and choose Reply in Messages. Check the listed office or room team before replying.
How newsletters work
School news emails start off. Parents can turn them on in Account and choose private-message email alerts separately. Newsletters and explicit general announcements can include their full content in email. Ordinary private and group conversations use generic email alerts. All replies stay in Ashby.
Published editions are fixed. Staff can duplicate an edition into a new draft or withdraw it from Ashby; delivered email cannot be recalled. The audience is checked when an edition publishes. Later enrollment does not reveal older newsletters. Private team conversations contain one guardian and the authorized school staff.
What this is
Messages brings together private conversations with school staff, shared groups and school announcements.
Do this
After you sign in as a parent, open Messages from the left menu.
Choose a conversation, or use the plus beside Private conversations. Type a name in To at the bottom of the conversation area. Select a school staff member to open the conversation and start typing.
Type a reply and tap Send when you want to answer.
How it works
- Communication language
- In family Account, choose a preferred language and Save language. Not specified clears it. This saves your profile preference at the selected school; it does not translate messages, change the app language or notify staff. Ask the school directly for translation help, especially with health, safety or legal information. After an uncertain save, refresh before trying again.
- Keeping messages
- Messages may stay while the school must keep related records. A recorded hold pauses message cleanup. Removing a child’s file also removes that family’s group posts and their replies, so those messages must be ready for removal first.
- Private conversation
- only you and the listed participants. You can start a private message to school staff; other guardians are not automatically added.
- Staff updates only
- a group for school notes. Use Reply privately to start a separate message to school staff.
- Read
- for manual read marking, open Message options and choose Mark conversation as read. Parents can discuss together in discussion groups. School audience groups follow enrollment automatically, and new members see messages from when they join. Open Members to mute notifications.
- Replies and keyboard
- Choose Reply to open its message box. Use Close replies to return to the original message. Tab moves between controls and Enter activates a focused button; closing replies returns focus to the original Reply button when it is still available.