Every person connected to your food service program — students who eat, staff who run the POS, guardians who receive updates — has a record in Gaia. This article explains the four types of people records and how guardian and sibling relationships work.
The Four Person Types
Student: a K-12 student enrolled in the district. Students carry eligibility status, an account balance, allergens, dietary restrictions, grade level, homeroom, and guardian relationships.
Staff: a school employee. Staff can authenticate at POS terminals with a PIN and may be priced at a staff rate. Staff records also identify who ran a given POS session.
Guardian: a parent or guardian linked to one or more students. Guardians don't have their own Gaia login.
Unidentified: a placeholder created when an eligibility document references a student Gaia can't yet match to an existing record. These stay in place until someone links them to a real student. See Eligibility Documents and Uploads for the matching workflow.
How People Get Into Gaia
Three ways: a bulk roster upload at the start of the year (see Download and Upload Your Roster), adding one person by hand (see Add a Student or Staff Member), or automatically as a placeholder when a meal application names a student Gaia can't match yet.
Guardian Relationships
A student can be linked to one or more guardians through a relationship record. Three relationship types:
Primary: the main contact. A student needs at least one primary guardian on file for eligibility updates to reach the family.
Secondary: an alternate contact. Optional.
Other: covers relationships like siblings, linking two students to the same household.
Sibling relationships are mirrored automatically: link Student A to Student B as a sibling, and Student B's record updates with the reverse link on its own.
A guardian record can be created automatically when you set up a student relationship, or created first and linked to a student afterward.