Parent Records

Parents and guardians are first-class entities in the admissions system, stored in a dedicated parents table rather than being embedded as simple text fields on lead records. This architecture enables deduplication, cross-lead relationships, and a complete family view.

Why Parents Are Separate Records

In an admissions system, the same parent often applies for multiple children. By storing parents as independent records:

• One record per parent -- A mother with three children in different programs has a single parent record linked to all three.
• Consistent contact information -- Update an email or phone number once and it reflects everywhere.
• Family view -- See all children associated with a parent and all parents associated with a child.
• Deduplication -- The system prevents creating duplicate parent records for the same person.

What a Parent Record Contains

Each parent record stores:

Field	Description
First Name	Parent's given name
Last Name	Parent's family name
Email	Primary email address (used for deduplication)
Phone	Primary phone number
Address	Street address
City	City or locality
Country	Country
Relationship	Role in the family (mother, father, guardian, etc.)

How Parent Records Are Created

Parent records are created automatically in several ways:

From Form Submissions

When a family submits an admissions form that includes parent/guardian fields, the system:

1. Extracts parent information from the form data.
2. Searches for an existing parent with the same email within the school.
3. If found, links the existing parent to the new lead.
4. If not found, creates a new parent record and links it.

From Imports

When importing applicants via CSV/XLSX, parent columns (e.g., parent_email, parent_first_name) are used to create or find parent records.

Manual Creation

Admissions staff can manually add parent records when creating or editing leads.

Viewing Parent Information

Parent information appears in several places:

• Lead Detail Page -- The lead profile shows associated parents with their contact details.
• Lead List -- The guardian_name and guardian_email columns display the primary parent's information (resolved from the parents table).
• Family View -- Shows all family members (parents and children) linked together.

TIP

The lead list still displays guardian_name and guardian_email columns for convenience. These are computed fields resolved from the parents table, not stored directly on the lead.

Historical Data

When a form is submitted, the raw guardian data from the submission is preserved in the lead's data.guardian[] JSON field as a read-only archive. This ensures the original submission data is never lost, even if the parent record is later updated.

Parent Records and Privacy

Parent records contain personal data and are subject to data protection considerations:

• Parent records are scoped to the school (kindergarten) level -- schools cannot see parents from other schools.
• Access to parent data requires appropriate permissions.
• Exported data containing parent information should be handled according to your school's data protection policies.

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