TAMPA, Fla. -- This is the time of year for the permission slip blues. Moms and aads of grade-schoolers know it all too well.
Backpacks stuffed with crumpled requests for spring field trips to Lowry Park Zoo or Busch Gardens. Parents scrounge for money at the last moment so their son or daughter can head to Disney with his classmates.
A Tampa tech startup called Script is hoping to ease that burden and simplify the paper trail. The company created a free phone app allowing parents to sign and pay permission slips with a few taps of the phone.
“My daughter gets distracted by a dog,” says Tracy Malcolm, mother of 7-year-old Brooklyn, a second-grader who’s already bringing home lots of forms to sign. “She’s not going to remember to give me something.”
Tracy is the wife of Script web developer Miguel Malcolm, who is incorporating his frustrations with permission slips into his work.
The app, which automatically alerts parents about new forms, costs schools about $2,000 per year.
Right now, only a handful of local private and charter schools are using it. But Script is hoping that Tampa Bay area public schools will sign on soon enough.
