What's New in Carpool.School: May 2026

Two changes worth knowing about this month, plus a lot of small ones you'll feel.

You don't need your school's approval anymore

Any parent can now start a Carpool.School community for their school, daycare, camp, after-school program, or any K-12 group. About a minute, no codes, no waiting.

For organizations ready to lead, the verified path is still the more powerful one. Upload your parent roster, every family gets a personal invite link, and the community is marked Verified. By definition, every parent in it has been roster-checked. One upload reaches everyone. Admins also get bell schedule sync, calendar and events flowing to families, and the ability to broadcast announcements via push and email.

Read the parent-led announcement →

The app feels like one product now

Five tabs from any screen: Home, Families, Chat, Carpool, Account. Profiles, connections, ride requests, and schedules used to live in separate flows. They work together now.

Carpool specifically: set your driving days once. The app finds families going your way and surfaces them when it matters, not when you remember to look.

Beyond that, a long list of polish that makes the app feel finished: better navigation, smoother bottom sheets, notifications that take you to the right place, a map you can swipe back from. Hundreds of small frictions gone.

What's next

Coming in June: smart notifications, best matches at the top of Home, a polished admin app, and a Launch Kit community admins can share with parents (email, social, group-chat, flyer). Verified, school-led communities remain where the network grows best, and we're building a path for school staff to claim parent-led communities and convert them.