Dallas-Fort Worth
How DFW families keep up with school calendars from every campus
Dallas-Fort Worth families often have a different calendar for every campus: one district for the older child, another for the younger, plus a magnet, a sport and a PTA night. The way through is to subscribe to each school's published calendar, forward the emails that are not on that calendar, and look at all of it in one place. This guide is that routine.
Why one inbox is not a family calendar
A lot of North Texas households cross a district line without moving. One child is at a neighborhood elementary, another is at a middle school across town, and a sport or a program adds a third calendar that neither school publishes. The dates arrive as a district PDF, a campus newsletter, a coach's email and a paper flyer. They land in one parent's mail.
The other parent cannot plan around a date they never saw. Subscribing to the published calendars, and forwarding what those calendars leave out, is the whole system. No one has to retype the year.
Subscribe to each campus calendar
Districts and campuses in the area publish their own calendars. Useful starting points are Dallas ISD, Fort Worth ISD, Plano ISD, Frisco ISD, Richardson ISD and Arlington ISD. Look for a calendar page, a subscribe link, or an ICS or iCal link. Names vary by district. If you cannot find one, ask the front office or the campus PTA for the link they want families to use.
Add each link to the family calendar as a read-only subscription. In HouseChief that feed stays read-only: you see their dates, and you do not write back to the district calendar. When the district moves an early-release day, the feed moves. Your note about who is driving does not.
Name the subscriptions so a glance tells them apart: "Maya campus", "Leo campus", "basketball". A household that uses Google Calendar, iCloud and Outlook can still keep one family view. Each parent connects the calendar app they already use. The setup is in two-way calendar sync.
Forward what the feed does not include
The district calendar has the student holidays and the early-release days. It usually does not have picture day, the book fair, the permission slip or the PTA meeting that was only in paragraph four of the newsletter. Forward that email from a parent's own address. HouseChief proposes the dates in the Inbox. A parent reviews them and taps Approve. Nothing is added before that.
If you do not connect a mail account, email reaches HouseChief only when a parent forwards it. The school cannot write to the family address directly. The steps are in get school emails onto your calendar and in forward a school email. A paper flyer is the same idea with a photo: turn a school flyer into calendar events.
Put the week where everyone can see it
A calendar that lives on one phone still fails at 7 a.m. The wall display runs in the browser on a tablet you already own and shows today, tomorrow, chores and dinner. There is no HouseChief device to buy. Families who want the dates in the kitchen, without another login, can leave that tablet on the counter.
Once a week, look at every campus on the same screen and name the conflicts out loud. A Thursday that is early release at one school and a concert at the other is the kind of clash the subscriptions are for. Sign up if you want that view in HouseChief. The short answers to what HouseChief is are in the FAQ.
A link the PTA can hand out
The easiest campus calendar is one the PTA or the front office publishes on purpose, as a subscribe link rather than a PDF. If your campus does not have one yet, send them a calendar link your PTA can publish. It is a short page you can forward: what to put on the calendar, what to leave off, and how families subscribe. Texas PTA is the state association if the campus PTA wants its own starting point.
Sam's week, as an example: Maya's campus calendar is a subscription, Leo's is another, and the Thursday newsletter still mentions a program the feed does not list. Sam forwards the newsletter, drops the one event the family will skip, and approves the rest. Jordan sees both campuses on the same calendar that night, and on the kitchen tablet in the morning.
Sources
Questions
How do I add more than one DFW school calendar?
Subscribe to each campus or district calendar with its own link, and give each one a clear name. The feeds stay read-only. Dates that only appear in email still need a parent to forward them and approve them. One family calendar can show all of the feeds together.
What if my schools are in different districts?
Treat each district calendar as its own subscription. Dallas ISD, Fort Worth ISD, Plano ISD, Frisco ISD, Richardson ISD and Arlington ISD each publish their own pages, and a household can follow more than one. Put rides and family notes on your calendar, not on theirs.
Can the PTA send dates straight into HouseChief?
No. Mail is accepted only from a parent's own address. Ask the PTA for a calendar link families can subscribe to, using the PTA calendar tip, and forward any email you still want a parent to approve.