The Students section is where you manage student and staff accounts for your district: who is enrolled, their eligibility, their account balance, their dietary needs, and their guardians. Go to Students > Accounts from the main menu.
This article covers the register itself. Balances are covered in Managing Student Accounts & Balances, and eligibility in Student Eligibility (Free, Reduced & Paid).
Getting people into Gaia
There are three ways, and most districts use more than one. Pick by how many people you are dealing with.
One at a time, for a mid-year arrival or a new staff member. See Add a Student or Staff Member.
From a spreadsheet, for the start of a year, a batch of arrivals, or any bulk update. Download your current list, edit it, and upload it back. See Download and Upload Your Roster.
Automatically from your student information system. Some districts have Gaia take a feed from the system they already keep their roster in, so new students and changes come across on their own. It is set up once with your Gaia team and your district IT team; ask your Customer Success Manager if you want it.
Not sure which? A handful of people is quicker by hand. A file is quicker for anything more. And if you find yourself re-typing the same data every term, ask your Customer Success Manager about the automatic sync.
Students and Staff
The Students page holds two kinds of people:
Students: enrolled students with lunch accounts, eligibility, and meal history.
Staff: staff members who also have accounts in the system.
Switch between them with the toggle at the top of the page. The + Add button changes to match, so it reads Add Student or Add Staff.
Finding someone
Search by name or ID, and narrow the list with the filters:
School, Grade, and Homeroom.
Eligibility: Paying, Free, Reduced, or All.
Status: Active, Inactive, or All.
The table and the detail panel
Each row shows the person's name and photo, their ID, school, grade and homeroom, eligibility, account balance, allergens and dietary restrictions, and when the record was last updated.
Click a row to open the detail panel on the right, with basic information, eligibility history, and transaction history, without leaving the page.
For what you can do to one person from here, see Add a Student or Staff Member.
The full profile
Click View Full Profile from the detail panel or the row to open the person's own page, which adds:
All personal details, and contact relationships such as guardians and parents. See People and Relationships in Gaia for how these connections work and how sibling records link to each other.
The full eligibility timeline.
Complete transaction history with the account balance.
Keeping the roster current
People are never permanently deleted. To take someone out of active lists, set them inactive, on their row or in bulk by ticking several people and using Deactivate in the toolbar that appears. Reactivate works the same way.
Deactivating is not deleting. The person keeps their record, their balance, and their history, and comes back on the same record when you reactivate them or when they next appear in an uploaded file as Active.