Manage consent forms

Consent forms are the standing permissions your school collects from families: a photo release, a field trip permission, a sunscreen authorization, an allergy plan, or anything else you write yourself. You create each one as a template, decide who has to acknowledge it, and Clear Day shows it to those families to sign in the app.

This is different from sending an enrollment agreement out for e-signature. Agreements go through your connected DocuSign or Dropbox Sign account; see Connect and manage e-signature providers. Consent forms live entirely inside Clear Day and are signed with a typed name, not through a provider.

Only directors and admins can create, change, or archive consent templates. Teachers can see the list but not edit it.

Create a template

Each template has:

• A title: what families see, like "Photo release" or "Field trip permission."
• A key: a stable identifier for the form across versions (for example, photo-release). Reuse the same key when you revise a form so its history stays connected; use a new key for a genuinely new form.
• A body: the text families read before they sign. This is written in Markdown.
• Who it's required for: see Choose who must sign below.
• Whether it needs a signature: see Require a signature below.

There are no built-in form types. Photo release, field trip, sunscreen, and allergy plan are all just templates you write: the title, key, and body are yours to fill in, so you can build any custom form your program needs.

Choose who must sign

Each template carries the list of family roles it applies to. A current enrolled family is the typical case, but you can also include historical (past) families when a form needs to reach them too. A family only sees a consent form if their role is on its required-for list, so a template with no roles selected won't appear to anyone.

Require a signature

Turn on the signature requirement when a form needs more than a tap to acknowledge. When it's on, the family member types their name to sign, and Clear Day records that typed name along with the date, time, and the device's IP address as proof of who signed and when. Leave it off for a simple acknowledgement that doesn't need a recorded name.

What families see and how they sign is covered in Sign consent forms.

Versions: publishing and revising

Consent templates are versioned on publish. Once a template is published, its title and body are frozen. You don't edit them in place. To change the wording, publish a new version under the same key. Clear Day numbers it as the next version and starts showing it to families as the current one to sign. Families who already signed an earlier version keep that signed record against the exact version they agreed to, so your history stays accurate.

You can update which roles a template is required for at any time without publishing a new version.

Archive a template

When a form is no longer in use, archive it. Archived templates stop appearing for families to sign and drop out of the active list, but the signatures already collected against them are preserved. You can include archived templates when you review the full list, and un-archive a template if you need it back.

If a consent form isn't showing up for families the way you expect, email [email protected].