Help

Getting an account, and signing in

The address is facilities.elkcityschools.com. It works on a phone, and it can be added to a home screen like an app.

District staff

Use Sign in with Google with your district account. There is no separate password to invent, and you are let in straight away — anyone with an @elkcityschools.com address is recognised as district staff, which is what decides the spaces you are offered and whether you are asked which group you are booking for.

Sign in with the district account. If you sign in with a personal Google account instead, the system has no way to know it is you: you get a second, separate account carrying none of your approvals, and no error anywhere says so. If a screen you expect is missing, open the menu and check the address under Signed in as first.

Community groups and anyone outside the district

You can sign in with any Google account, or create one here with an email address and a password. Either way an account from outside the district waits for a person to approve it — you will see a short screen saying so, and an email when it is ready. Signing up a second time does not make it happen sooner.

Accounts are approved by the district office rather than by a school, because it is a decision about who gets into the system at all, not about one booking.

Making a request, step by step

Open the menu and choose Request a facility. There are four steps, and each one saves as you go — a dropped signal or a closed tab loses nothing. An unfinished request waits for you under My requests.

1. The event. What it is called, roughly how many people, and anything the building should know. Tick Admission will be charged if you are selling tickets or taking money at the door. Outside groups are also asked who the group is and what kind of group it is. Your answer is taken as your own description of yourselves; the district confirms it.
2. The space and the dates. Pick a campus to narrow the list, then one space, then either a single date or a weekly pattern — days of the week and a date to run through. A ten-week practice series is one request, not ten. One space and one pattern per submission. To add another space, or the same space on another day, fill the form in again — each submission adds to the list underneath. Remove takes a date back off.
3. What you need in the room. Tables, chairs, trash cans, restrooms unlocked, doors and access, heating and cooling for your hours, bleachers, sound and microphones, video, scoreboard, kitchen, concession stand — with a number where one makes sense. You are never asked which department does any of it. Ask for the thing; the system knows who it belongs to. Only the options that a given space can actually deliver are offered, so the list is shorter in a classroom than in the Pioneer Center.
4. Check it and send it. The last step lists anything that would stop the request — a date in the past, a space you have not given enough notice for, an hour the space is not available, a clash with a booking that already exists. Fix those and press submit.

How much notice

Community and outside groups need 14 days for every space. District staff have no minimum, but the setup work does: a kitchen or a concession stand is scheduled five days ahead, sound, video and bleachers three days, most everything else one or two. Those clocks run from your event, not from the day you ask — so a request that arrives late arrives late for the crews as well as for the principal.

What happens after you submit

A request goes to one or two people, in order, and it stops at the first one who says no.

1. The athletic director, for two gyms only. The Pioneer Center Gym and the Middle School Gym have an athletic calendar somebody runs, so the director for that school is asked first. Every other space skips this.
2. The principal, or the Pioneer Center's site manager. This is the final approval. Nothing follows it.
3. Approved. The booking is confirmed and the space is held — nothing else can be booked over it, including the setup and teardown time either side. You get an email. The setup work you asked for is split up and sent to the departments that do it, each with its own due time. The event is published to the district calendars, and that is what schedules heating and cooling for your hours.

Maintenance, custodial, technology, child nutrition and athletics receive work, not a vote. A confirmed booking is never held up waiting for the people who have to set it up.

If nobody has decided after two days, the system reminds them, and keeps reminding them.

If it is denied, the request ends there and you are emailed the reason the approver typed. It is on the request itself as well, under My requests. A denied request cannot be reopened — if a different time or a different space would work, start a new one.

What we need from you

The request is the only thing the building sees. Nobody is standing behind it filling in what you left out.

• Ask early. Especially for a kitchen, a concession stand, sound or video. See the notice times above.
• Ask for everything, in step 3. A room is set up from your list. Tables you remember on the day are tables somebody has to drop what they are doing to find.
• Give the real hours. Put down when your event starts and ends, not when you would like the doors open — the space is already blocked before and after for setup and teardown, and padding the times takes the room away from somebody else for no reason.
• Keep the attendance number honest. It is what a principal reads to decide whether the room fits and what the building needs on hand.
• Cancel what you do not need, as soon as you know. See below — this is the one that costs the district real money.
• Leave the space as you found it, and tell the school about anything broken or spilled before you leave rather than after.

Approving: principals, site managers, athletic directors

If a request needs you, you are emailed, and it is listed under Waiting on you in the menu with a count beside it. The list holds only requests that are genuinely yours to decide right now — a request still sitting with the athletic director does not appear on the principal's list until it has been passed along.

Deciding

Open the request. You see the event, every date it covers, the space, who is asking and what they have asked to have set up. Then Approve or Deny.

• A denial needs a reason, and the system will not take one without it. It is emailed to the requester and shown on their copy of the request, so write it for them to read rather than for the file.
• Approving is a commitment of the building. It confirms the booking, holds the space, opens the doors on the access schedule, sends the crews their work and schedules heating and cooling for those hours.
• Decide quickly even when the event is months away. The crews' lead times count back from the event. Approving a Saturday tournament on Friday hands maintenance a three-day job overdue on arrival.
• You cannot approve out of order, and you do not need to check whether it is your turn — if it is on your list, it is your turn.
• One decision settles a step. Where a school has two principals, both are told and the first to decide decides. It is cover, not a second signature.

What you are responsible for

• Your own building. You are asked about the spaces at your school, and the athletic directors are asked about the two gyms whose calendars they run. Nobody above you signs off afterwards.
• Deciding, rather than leaving it. An undecided request is a room nobody can plan around; the reminder every two days is not the plan.
• Stopping bookings that are not happening. You can cancel a booking in your own building. Please do, rather than letting it sit — see below.
• Telling us when the facts about a room change. Hours, how long the room needs either side of an event, how much notice it takes, what it holds: those are set per space, and today only the district office can edit them. Email and they will be changed.

Things worth knowing once

• The system refuses double bookings outright. Not a warning — an approved booking makes the space unavailable for that window, setup and teardown included, and a second one cannot be approved over it. If a space is spoken for by an arrangement that never went through here, the system has no way to know that.
• Requesters never choose a department, so do not expect to see one on the request. They choose what they need and it is routed for them.
• Email you receive comes from the role you hold, not from a list somebody maintains. See below for what you can and cannot turn off.
• Sign in with your district Google account. Your approvals are attached to it. A personal account signs in perfectly happily and holds none of them, which is the usual reason for an empty Waiting on you.

Setup crews and the board

Custodial, maintenance, technology, child nutrition and athletics each get their own board, reached from the menu. It is built for a phone in a bright gym or a dim mechanical room: one card per job, biggest thing on the card is how long you have, and colour means one thing only — how soon it is due.

• Each department's work is its own job with its own due time. Custodial finishing the tables has nothing to do with technology's microphones.
• Acknowledge says you have seen it and puts your name on it. Complete closes it, with a note if there is anything to say.
• The board keeps working with no signal — the last one you loaded is still there. Marking something complete needs signal to save.

Changing or cancelling a booking

Cancel; never ask for it to be deleted. Cancelling withdraws the event from the district calendars, which is what turns the heating and cooling back off, closes the crews' work and tells the requester. A booking removed any other way leaves the building running plant for an event that is not happening, with nothing on any screen to say so.

• You can cancel your own booking at any time, from the request itself. You are asked for a reason, and shown what is about to happen first.
• Principals and site managers can cancel bookings in their building, and the district office can cancel anywhere.
• To change a date, time or space, cancel and submit again. There is no edit after approval, deliberately: the room was held, the crews were told and the calendar was published against what was approved.
• To change what you need set up — more chairs, sound you forgot — call or email the district office rather than submitting a second request for the same event.

Email from this system

Mail comes from noreply@elkcityschools.com, and a reply to it is not read by anybody. Every message the system sends ends with an address that is — the same one at the bottom of this page. Write there instead.

What you receive follows from the job you hold. A principal is told about requests for their school; the athletic directors are told about bookings in athletic spaces across the district; departments are told about work assigned to them; requesters are told when their request is approved, or cancelled. Nobody can be subscribed to mail their role does not already carry — that is built into the system rather than left to a form.

If you hold a role, Email preferences in the menu lists what you get and lets you turn off the ones that are yours to turn off. A few cannot be turned off, and a request needs approval is the obvious one: an approver who silences it is a request nobody is told about.

Seeing what is already booked

Calendar in the menu shows every approved booking, by month or by week, and can be filtered to one campus or one space. Anyone signed in can see it — "is the gym free that Saturday" is the question people ask before they start a request, not after.

It shows what is booked here. A practice that lives only on a coach's own calendar is not on it.

When something looks wrong

• A screen you expect is missing. Open the menu and read the address under Signed in as. Almost always it is a second account made by signing in with a personal Google address.
• You are told to wait for approval and nobody has come back. Email us; there is nothing further for you to do on the site itself.
• An approval email arrived for something that is not yours. Say so rather than denying it — it usually means a role is attached to the wrong building.
• A booking is on the calendar that should not be. Tell the school or the district office so it can be cancelled properly. An event left standing keeps the building conditioned for it.

Questions, corrections, and anything this page does not answer: chauncey.tony@elkcityschools.com.