How Elira messages families (and understands replies)

What enrollment messages families receive, how yes/no replies are confirmed before anything is binding, and what happens after an acceptance.

Once your roster is connected, Elira runs the follow-up your team would do by hand — bilingually (English + Spanish) over email and text, plus a phone call for families who never respond. A family whose home language is Arabic gets every one of those same messages in Arabic instead, once instead of twice. Each of those channels only runs for families who consented to it — see Text, call & email consent.

How replies are understood — carefully

• A digit (1 accept / 2 decline) or a clear sentence ("yes, we'd love for Maria to attend") counts as a real answer.
• A bare "yes", "si", "no", or "ok" is not treated as binding — Elira asks once: *"reply 1 to ACCEPT or 2 to DECLINE."*
• Any decline gets a second confirmation ("are you sure?") before the seat is marked declined — no seat is ever released on an ambiguous text.
• One phone number, several students (siblings, or the same guardian at two schools)? A reply is never applied to every seat at once — Elira asks the family to include the child's name ("ACCEPT Maria") so exactly one seat changes.
• STOP (or UNSUBSCRIBE / BAJA) immediately stops texts to that family.
• Every family email carries an unsubscribe link (plus our postal address); one click stops emails, texts, and calls for that family — same as texting STOP.
• Every enrollment call opens by identifying itself and reading out your main office number: *"This is Elira, the automated enrollment assistant calling from [your school]. You can reach the school office at [your number]."* Families always know it's an automated call, and always have a number to call back — federal calling rules require that number on every automated call, so Elira will not place enrollment calls until your office phone number is saved in your school config.
• During a call, a family can press 9 at any time — even mid-menu — to be transferred straight to your main office.
• On the seat menu a family can also press 7 ("if we have reached the wrong number") or press 8 ("to stop all automated calls, texts, and emails from the school to this number, permanently"). The press-8 prompt states the full effect out loud, because that is what the guardian's signed consent form says it does. Both immediately and permanently stop every automated call, text, and email reaching that family — the same suppression as texting STOP — and Elira says so out loud before hanging up. Neither one ever declines the seat: the family stays on your list for your team to reach in person.
• The two differ in one way that matters to your office. Press 8 is the guardian withdrawing consent, so it also suppresses their email address — correcting their phone number later will not restart anything. Press 7 says only "this number is not us", so it suppresses the number alone: once your team confirms the right number and updates it in SchoolMint, Elira resumes as normal. Both appear in your daily digest so someone can follow up.

- Press 8 is recorded against the family's email address as well as their phone. So if that family later gives your office a new cell number and you update it in SchoolMint, Elira still won't contact them — the request to stop follows the family, not just the old number. That is deliberate, not a sync problem. Your team can still reach them in person; they stay on your list and in the daily digest. - Press 7 is recorded against the phone number only. Whoever picked up told us they aren't this family, so it's a fact about the number, not a request from your applicant — Elira stops using that number and your office chases the family for a correct one.

• A family gets at most one enrollment call in any 24 hours. If nobody answers the morning call, the next attempt is the following school day, not that same evening — so a family who is hard to reach hears from Elira on three different days rather than three times in one. Texts and emails on the ladder are unaffected.

After a confirmed acceptance

The family instantly gets the registration packet message (email + text): the registration link plus the document checklist — birth certificate, immunization records, two proofs of address, health insurance card, and a transcript (grade 9+) or report card.

Where you see it all

The Applicants table in your dashboard shows every family's status, replies, and message history — you can pause, resume, or skip any family. Confirmed accepts/declines are also written back into SchoolMint.