An Information & Task Management Platform for Schools
One place for the school day.
The Stable holds what faculty and staff need to find and do: the handbook, the calendar, who handles what, the forms, your schedule, and the few things that need your attention this week. What you send into it comes back. A question returns answered. A deadline returns on its day.
For Northside College Prep faculty and staff, by invitation.
What the Stable is
A private website for a school's faculty and staff. It gathers the documents, dates, forms, and names that usually live in a dozen emails, a shared drive, and someone's memory, and it keeps them current. Every section has a named owner. Every change is dated and logged. It holds no student data: no names, rosters, grades, or IEP and 504 details, and no confidential personnel information.
Find
The handbook, article by article, with the date each was last reviewed. Who handles what, searchable by the question you would actually ask. The staff directory, the master schedule, the calendar in full, and every form with its owner.
Do
Request a meeting with an administrator. Prepare sub plans before you need them. Book the library for a class. Reserve a space. Ask a question and read the answer on the same page.
Keep up
Home shows what needs your attention; check off what you have read. Today & This Week shows your classes in today's block order. Weekly reminders carry the week to you, and email notices are yours to turn on or off.
Why a boomerang. Why a stallion.
Why a boomerang
A boomerang leaves your hand and comes back to it. Most of what a school asks of you works the same way. You send a form and wait for the answer. You read a deadline and need to see it again on its day. An office posts an update on Friday and the whole building needs it by Monday.
The Stable is built around that return. Check off an item on Home and it stays gone until something about it changes; then it comes back. Ask a question and the answer arrives on the page where you asked it. Each week's reminders come back on the week they apply.
Why a stallion
A stable is where the horses come home at the end of the day, and where everything they need is kept in its place: each stall marked, each piece of tack on its own hook. That is the job of the Stable for a school.
The stallion is the one who knows the way back. Head up, ears forward, he steps out through the open gate in the morning and comes in the same way at the end of the day. In the mark the gate stands open, orange against blue, because the Stable is a place to return to.
Inside the Stable
The menu on the left of every screen is the whole map. It has four groups. Choose an item to see what it does.
The StableIn the Start group
Home
What needs your attention, the newest announcements, this week's reminders, and recent shout-outs. Check off what you have read; a checked item comes back if it changes.
The search box at the top of every screen understands the words teachers use. Type the question the way you would say it, and the matching form, person, or handbook article comes up.
People who maintain a section, and the Stable's administrators, see two more groups in their menu: the tools for their own sections, and the review queue where school-wide updates are approved before they publish.
The search box at the top of every screen understands the words teachers use. Type the question the way you would say it, and the matching form, person, or handbook article comes up.
People who maintain a section, and the Stable's administrators, see two more groups in their menu: the tools for their own sections, and the review queue where school-wide updates are approved before they publish.
Getting started
Access is by invitation. Here is what happens, in order.
Your invitation arrives
An email from The Stable with a link. At Northside the Stable administrator sends it. If you expected one and it has not come, check your spam folder, then ask the administrator.
Choose how you sign in
Open the link and set a password, or choose Sign in with Google and use the address you were invited with. Either way works from then on. There is nothing to install.
Open boomerangstable.app
Bookmark it. You stay signed in on that browser. On a shared computer, choose Sign out at the bottom of the menu when you are done.
Start on Home
Read what needs your attention and check off each item as you go. Then open Today & This Week for your schedule and the week's dates.
Make it yours
Pin the pages you use most. Set the text size at the bottom of the menu. On My stuff, choose which email notices you want.
Ask when you are stuck
Questions & Help sends your question to the office that handles it. The answer comes back to you on the same page, and by email if you keep that notice on.
If you see Almost there after signing in, your account has not been given staff access yet. Tell the Stable administrator; it takes a moment to fix.
Start small
Nothing in the Stable is required. No one is asked to use all of it, and no one is told how much of it you use. Most people begin with one habit and add the next when the first one has paid for itself.
Your first week
Sign in once and bookmark the address. On Monday, open Home and check off what needs your attention. That is the whole job. Everything else can wait.
When you want more
Look up a colleague on Teacher Schedules instead of emailing. Open Who Handles What before you ask a person. Read the calendar entry instead of searching your inbox for the date. Ask one question on Questions & Help and see where the answer lands.
When it has become routine
Prepare your sub plans before you need them. Pin the three pages you use most. Keep the email notices you want and turn off the rest on My stuff. If you chair a department or lead a team, post to your workspace from there.
Who posts what, and how it gets approved
Three kinds of content move through the Stable, and each travels a different way.
School-wide content Announcements, calendar dates, handbook articles, forms, weekly reminders
Each section has a named owner in an office. The owner sends an update; a Stable administrator approves, edits, or rejects it. Only approved items publish. Changes to safety, policy, and evaluation rules also need the principal's sign-off.
Department and team workspaces Meetings, documents, notes, team updates
The department chair and the team lead post directly to their own pages. Each post is dated and logged.
Your own work Pins, checkmarks, sub plans, requests, questions
What you pin, check off, prepare, or request is saved for you and shown to you. A question goes to you and to the people who answer for that office. Nothing you check off is reported.
Every published change carries a date and a line in the record, and each handbook article shows its version and the date it was last reviewed, so you can tell whether what you are reading is current.
Privacy, for students and for staff
Two sets of rules. The staff rules are enforced by the database that stores everything in the Stable, so they do not depend on anyone remembering them. The student rule is simpler: nothing about a student is stored, so there is nothing to protect.
Students
The Stable holds no student data. No names, rosters, grades, or IEP and 504 details, and no other record of any student. It is a tool for the adults in the building. Nothing in it identifies a student, and nothing in it is meant to.
No confidential personnel information either. Evaluation results, personnel files, and anything of that kind stay in the systems built for them. The Stable holds the schedule, the handbook, the calendar, and the names and roles people need to work together.
Department files stay in the building. Documents a chair adds to a department workspace are kept in private storage and opened only by signed-in staff, through links that expire in minutes.
Staff
Your own work is yours. Pins, checkmarks, recent searches, sub plans, requests, and appointments are saved under your account and shown to you alone. The database hands them to one person: you.
Questions go only where they need to. A question on Questions & Help reaches you and the people who answer for that office. Administrators see how many questions each office has received, not who asked. An email notice says only that something is waiting; the question and the answer never leave the Stable.
No one is told what you have read. The Stable keeps no record of which pages you open, and nothing you check off on Home is reported. One action is recorded on purpose: when you acknowledge the handbook, the acknowledgment is written down, because that is what an acknowledgment is for.
Published content is signed. When a section owner, chair, or team lead publishes something, the record shows who published it and when, so you can trust what you read.
Community is opt-in. No one is asked to share a birthday, family news, or anything about their health.
No trackers. The Stable and this page carry no analytics or advertising trackers. Sign-in is by invitation; with Sign in with Google, the Stable never sees a password.
Questions
Do I have to use it?
No. No one at Northside is required to use any part of the Stable. It is there when it saves you a search or an email.
Does it work on my phone?
Yes, in the phone's browser. The menu folds away, the calendar becomes a day-by-day list, and the text size buttons are at the bottom of the menu.
Who can see what I do?
Your pins, checkmarks, sub plans, and requests are visible to you alone. A question you ask goes to you and to the people who answer for that office. Administrators see how many questions each office has received, not who asked. The privacy section has the full list.
Something is wrong or out of date. What do I do?
Ask on Questions & Help, or tell the owner named on that section. Owners send corrections for approval, and the change carries its date when it publishes.
Do I need another password?
Not if you choose Sign in with Google with the address you were invited with. If you prefer a password, set one from the invitation link; Forgot your password on the sign-in page sends a reset link when you ask for it.
Is my students' information in the Stable?
No. The Stable holds no student data: no names, rosters, grades, or IEP and 504 details. It holds no confidential personnel information either.
Is the Stable a Boomerang Classroom product?
No. Drew Snow built both, and they share the boomerang. The Stable is independent of Boomerang Classroom: it is not for sale, and there is nothing to buy.
What do the build number and date mean?
Every release shows them at the bottom of the menu and on the About page, which lists what each release changed. If the number has changed since you last looked, something has.