How to Automate Prenda

A microschool is a business run out of somebody's front room

Prenda is the platform behind microschools, and a microschool is small on purpose: a handful of K to 8th grade children learning together under one adult, who Prenda calls a guide. Plenty of them meet in the guide's own home.

The company supplies the parts a guide could not build alone. A learning system shaped around four modes of the day, connect, conquer, collaborate and create. Adaptive diagnostic tests in math and reading that place a child where they actually are rather than where their age says. A software platform for enrollment, student progress and payments, plus a marketing site and a school profile with its own address so families can find it. Behind that sit a setup specialist, a guide coach and academic coaches on call.

What it adds up to is one person who is at once a teacher, a small business owner and an admissions office.

Class ends at three and the second shift starts

Teaching is what a guide signed up for, and it is the smaller half of the week.

A parent messages at nine at night asking whether there is a seat for a second grader in January. Another family's scholarship money was meant to land this quarter and nobody is certain it did. A third family has gone quiet, which either means a holiday or means they are leaving in March. How a student gets funded is not the same in Arizona as in Florida, and both change.

Then there is the being-found part. The school has a profile page, a spot on the microschool map, a local parents group on Facebook and whatever listing a neighbouring co-op keeps. Each is a separate tab, and each has to still be true.

None of it is difficult. All of it is a person at a laptop after the children have gone home.

Prenda

The funding side, watched weekly Whether a family's scholarship payment actually posted, read off the state portal that holds the answer instead of guessed at from a spreadsheet.

Inquiries that do not go cold A parent who asked about a place on Friday night, in front of the guide on Saturday morning, while the tour is still worth offering.

Nothing said to a family without you Lists get built and messages get drafted. What actually reaches a parent goes out over the guide's own name, every time.

The dashboard runs the school and stops at its front door

Most of a guide's day is already handled inside the platform, and it is worth knowing exactly how far that goes.

Enrollment is managed in the platform rather than in a notebook. Student progress is tracked as children move through the learning system, with the adaptive diagnostics in math and reading giving a real starting level instead of a guess. Payments run through the platform, and for scholarship families Prenda handles the invoicing and passes the guide's fee on. Every guide gets a marketing website and a microschool profile with its own address, so a searching family can find the school and make contact without the guide building a thing.

That answers most of the day, and it is why the software exists.

What it describes is the inside of the microschool. The scholarship itself lives on a state portal with its own login and its own quarterly calendar. The rules a family has to satisfy are published by a state agency that has never heard of you. The parent asking about January asked on Facebook. Each of those sits on somebody else's website holding an answer the guide needs, and the only way in is a person typing a password.

Every seat, payment and inquiry accounted for by breakfast

None of that checking needs a teacher, and none of it needs to happen at night.

The state funding portal checked every week, so a payment that did not post is caught in days rather than at the end of a quarter when the rent is due. Every family's payment status set against the roster, with the two that failed named. Overnight inquiries from the profile page, the contact form and the local group waiting in one list with each parent's actual question attached.

Then the things a guide teaching all day never reaches. Whether the school's listing still shows the right ages, the right hours and an open seat, checked on every site it appears on. Families who have not logged in for a fortnight, flagged by name, because a quiet family is the earliest sign of an empty chair in September. A state agency's requirements page watched for the week it changes, since the rules differ by state and nobody posts you a letter.

That is not teaching. It is the errand list wrapped around teaching, and it grows with every child enrolled.

Guides were not recruited to check portals

The money either landed or it did not, and finding out takes a login, a portal and ten minutes nobody scheduled into the day. The parent asking about January needs an answer as well. Neither of those is teaching, and both of them happen after the children have gone home.

WebRun is an AI agent that works a real Chrome browser, signed in as you. It opens Prenda, the funding portal, the school's profile and the local group in turn, and hands back one short list: what paid, what did not, who asked, who went quiet.

What it will not do is speak to a family on your behalf. Messages are drafted and left for the guide whose school it is, because a parent conversation is the entire relationship and it belongs to a person.

The workflows below are already built, and each one names what it opens.