Release Notes

Connect AI can now read and update your school's settings — and GPA scale changes get an extra safety check.

Your connected AI can now view and update school settings like your contact info, branding colors, grading defaults, attendance rules, notification preferences, and transcript display options — the same switch as Connect AI's other school-structure tools. It can also read your GPA scale and grading bonus rules. Because changing your GPA scale re-grades every past report card at your school, Connect AI always shows you exactly what would change, and how many students would be affected, before doing anything — and it won't apply a GPA scale change without your explicit go-ahead. GPA changes are available through Connect AI only, not the in-app Ask NavEd assistant, since a change with that much reach deserves extra care; the other, easily-reversible settings changes work through Ask NavEd too, with the same show-me-first-then-confirm behavior as other recent school-setup changes. School administrators only.

Connect AI can now see your staff roster and work with school announcements — and Ask NavEd can draft one for you.

Your connected AI can now list your staff — name, role, active status, and which classes they teach, never contact info — the same switch as Connect AI's other school-structure tools, off by default. Separately, any school that already has Announcements turned on can have Connect AI read and draft announcements: the title, message, and who it's for, never the actual list of people who will receive it. Asking "Ask NavEd" in the app to draft an announcement now shows you exactly what it's about to create and waits for your OK first, the same confirm-first behavior as other recent school-setup changes. School administrators only.

Ask NavEd can now make school-setup changes for you — with your OK first.

Ask a question like "add a new elective" or "set this class's exam weight to 30%" in the Ask NavEd chat, and it will now show you exactly what it's about to do and wait for you to confirm before changing anything — nothing happens until you say yes. This covers school setup and grading configuration only; Ask NavEd still never sees or touches any individual student's information, and it's available to school administrators only.

Connect AI's school-structure tools now turn on automatically with Connect AI itself.

Since we introduced Connect AI's structure-reading and structure-editing tools, they lived behind their own separate switch — meaning a school could turn on Connect AI but its connected AI still wouldn't see or manage grade levels, classes, electives, academic years, or clubs unless someone flipped that second switch too. That extra step is gone: any school with Connect AI turned on now automatically gets access to the school-structure tools as well. It still never includes a student or parent's name — just school structure and counts.

Connect AI can now edit classes, electives, clubs, academic years, and quarters — once a school turns that on.

Building on the setup work shipped earlier today, Connect AI can now update an existing academic year, quarter, class, elective, or club when asked — for example, "change the Chess Club's capacity to 20" or "move Q2 to start in November." Only the details you mention are changed; everything else stays as-is. It follows the exact same rules as the regular Sessions, Subjects, Electives, and Clubs pages, and renaming something into a name that's already taken is caught and explained instead of causing an error. Still off by default, and still limited to school structure — never a student or parent's name.

Connect AI can now set up classes, electives, and clubs — once a school turns that on.

Building on the academic-year and quarter setup we shipped earlier today, Connect AI can now create a new class, elective, or club when asked — for example, "add a Biology class for 9th grade" or "create a Chess Club." It always checks for an existing match first, so asking twice never creates a duplicate, and it follows the exact same rules as the regular Subjects, Electives, and Clubs pages in NavEd. Still off by default, and still limited to school structure — never a student or parent's name.

Connect AI can now set up a new academic year and its quarters — once a school turns that on.

Building on the structure-reading switch we shipped earlier today, Connect AI can now create a new session year and its quarters when asked — for example, setting up next year's calendar. It always checks first so asking twice never creates a duplicate, and it uses the exact same rules as the regular "Sessions" page in NavEd. Still off by default, and still limited to school structure — never a student or parent's name.

Connect AI can now read a school's basic structure — but only once a school turns that on.

This adds a second, separate switch to Connect AI, distinct from the one that lets an AI assistant see student names. This one only covers structure: grade levels, classes, electives, clubs, cohorts, and simple counts — never a student or parent's name. Every school starts with it switched off. Groundwork for AI-assisted school setup and everyday questions like "how many classes do we have this year."

Our free online gradebook is easier to find.

We rewrote how the free gradebook is described in search results, so teachers, microschools, and co-ops looking for a free gradebook can actually find ours. The gradebook itself works exactly as before.

A cleaner look for adding class materials and descriptions.

The "Add Class Material," "Edit Material," and "Edit Class Description" forms on the Class Hub have a refreshed look — clearer field labels, easier-to-scan sections, and a tidier file-upload picker. Same quick steps, just easier on the eyes.

New: school-wide AI controls.

School administrators can decide exactly how AI is used at their school — or turn it off entirely. In School Settings, a new AI section has one switch that turns off every AI feature in NavEd for your whole school, plus individual controls for administrators, staff, students, and parents. AI features are off for students and parents by default — turning them on is each school's choice. Turning AI off also immediately disconnects any external AI tools connected to your school's account. Available on every plan.

Faster: the New Unit page now loads instantly for schools with many classes.

Creating a new curriculum unit now loads instantly, even for schools with hundreds of classes.

Build curriculum by hand in NavEd Lessons — no AI required.

Create a unit, add weeks and steps, rename anything, and publish it to your students, all by hand. Connecting Claude remains available as an optional way to import a full outline instead.

A class can now serve more than one grade level.

Set up a course like Precalculus once and enroll students from both 11th and 12th grade, instead of creating a duplicate class for each grade. New enrollment pages automatically suggest students from every grade the class serves.

Switch or remove a student's elective right from the Enroll Students screen.

School admins can now change a student's elective for a time block, or remove it entirely, without leaving the enrollment screen or opening the class roster first.

Filter the enrollment checklist by grade level.

When enrolling students into a class, you can now filter the student list by grade level, right alongside the existing name search. Select All now applies to just the students currently shown, so you can narrow to one grade and enroll that whole group in a couple of clicks.

Saving a class roster now keeps you right where you were.

After saving changes to a class roster, you now return to the same class and school year you were working on, with a confirmation message, instead of a blank page.

Clarified how NavEd picks your current school year and term.

The Academic Year Management feature page previously implied there was a manual switch to "set" the active year. There isn't one: once your years and terms have dates, NavEd automatically shows teachers and students the current year and quarter based on today's date. No action needed, just clearer wording.

Ask NavEd's answers are even cleaner about who can do what.

If you already have permission to do something, Ask NavEd's answer now sticks strictly to your steps — no more leftover notes about restrictions that apply to other roles.

Ask NavEd got smarter about hard questions — and its "Take me there" shortcut actually shows up now.

Early on, Ask NavEd sometimes gave up on multi-step questions — like "how do I switch a student's elective?" — with a generic "I'm not sure" instead of a real answer. It also rarely offered the "Take me there" shortcut, even when there was an obvious page to jump straight to. Both are fixed: Ask NavEd now has more room to work through harder questions, and reliably links you to the right screen when one exists.

We also tightened up the answers themselves. If you already have permission to do something, Ask NavEd now just tells you how — no more unnecessary notes about who's allowed.

Ask NavEd's answers now get an extra safety check before you see them.

Every answer from the new Ask NavEd help assistant is now double-checked before it's shown to you, so it can never accidentally include technical or internal system details — just plain, everyday instructions. Extra protection for a feature that just shipped to every user on every page.

Introducing "Ask NavEd," a new in-app help assistant.

Look for the "Ask NavEd" button in the corner of any page. Ask it an everyday "how do I...?" question and it answers right there and links you straight to the right screen — no digging through menus, no waiting on an email reply. Available to everyone, on every page.

Heads of school can now only see their own school's data.

School administrator access is now scoped to the school it was set up for, matching the same rule already in place for teachers and other staff.

Connect AI can now read a school's student roster — but only once a school turns that on.

This is the first part of Connect AI that can see student names at all, and it stays deliberately narrow: a student's name, grade level, and whether they're currently enrolled — nothing else. No birthdates, no addresses, no contact details, no grades. Every school starts with this switched off, separate from the existing Connect AI switch, and a teacher only ever sees the students they actually teach. Groundwork for eventually letting an AI assistant answer everyday questions like "who's in my class" — never turned on without a school choosing to.

Connect AI's file-attachment tool now only fetches files from real public web addresses.

Curriculum file attachments fetched by link now go through stricter checks before the file is downloaded — only ordinary public web addresses are allowed, and any blocked or unusual attempt is recorded, just like every other Connect AI action. Extra protection ahead of any future AI features that would read student information.

Any future Connect AI access to student information will require a separate, explicit switch.

Connect AI's curriculum tools and any future student-information tools are now controlled by fully independent switches — turning one on will never automatically turn on the other. Nothing changes about what Connect AI can see today; this is groundwork so that if we ever add AI features that read student data, each school chooses that separately and it stays off until a school turns it on.

Connect AI connections now automatically slow down instead of allowing unlimited requests.

Each Connect AI connection is now limited to a reasonable number of requests per minute. If a connection is ever compromised or something misbehaves and starts making requests too fast, it's automatically and briefly throttled rather than able to pull data without limit. Extra protection ahead of any future AI features that would read student information.

Connect AI now keeps a record of everything it reads, not just what it changes.

Until now, Connect AI logged every change an AI assistant made to your curriculum, but not what it looked at. Every read is now recorded too — including which teacher's connection it came from — so there's a full trail of who saw what and when. Extra protection ahead of any future AI features that would read student information.

Connect AI access now automatically expires and turns off if the person who set it up leaves.

Connections created through Connect AI now expire on their own after a few months, and stop working immediately if the staff member who created the connection is deactivated. Extra protection ahead of any future AI features that would read student information.

Teachers can only change grades, assignments, and grading categories for their own classes.

Editing or deleting an assignment, changing a grading category's weight, and saving grades from the class roster now all require that teacher to actually teach that class, matching the same rule already in place for entering individual grades.

Teachers can now only enter or change grades for their own classes.

Saving or editing a grade now requires that teacher to actually teach that class, matching the same rule already in place on the student's profile page and class gradebooks.

Class gradebooks and student search now show teachers only the students and classes they teach.

A teacher's view of a class's gradebook, grade analytics, and student search results now requires that teacher to actually teach that class or student, matching the same rule already in place on the student's profile page.

Report cards and transcripts now open only to a student's current teachers, their family, and school admins.

A teacher's access to a student's report card PDF and transcript now requires that teacher to actually teach that student this school year, matching the same rule already in place on the student's profile page.

A student's own teacher now sees that student's complete academic record on the student's profile page.

Once a teacher opens the profile of a student they actually teach, they now see that student's full grades and coursework, not just the classes they personally teach.

Student attendance pages now open only to a student's own teachers, their family, and school admins.

A staff member's view of a student's attendance history now requires that staff member to actually teach that student this school year, matching the same rule already in place on the student's profile page.

Student profiles now open only to a student's own teachers, their family, and school admins.

A teacher's view of a student's full profile page (grades, GPA, family contact info, coursework, and attendance) now requires that teacher to actually teach that student this school year. Teachers can still browse the shared student roster (name and grade level) as before.

Teachers now see gradebook details only for students in their own classes.

When a teacher opens a student's profile, the grades and subjects shown now match the classes that teacher actually teaches that student, instead of showing every subject and grade on the student's record.

Continued behind-the-scenes work on how NavEd decides who sees which students.

More internal groundwork to make student visibility consistent across every page, this time on the student profile page. Nothing changes in how you work today, we'll let you know if anything does.

Continued behind-the-scenes work on how NavEd decides who sees which students.

More internal groundwork on the grades page, this time making sure grades from past grading periods keep showing up correctly. Nothing changes in how you work today, we'll let you know if anything does.

Continued behind-the-scenes work on how NavEd decides who sees which students.

More internal groundwork to make student visibility consistent across every page, this time on the grades page. Nothing changes in how you work today, we'll let you know if anything does.

Atlas finds answers anywhere in an article, not just the title.

Atlas, NavEd's built-in help assistant, previously only checked an article's title and short summary when looking for an answer — so it could miss information that was there, just further down the page, and tell you it didn't have an answer when it actually did. Atlas now reads the whole article, so it can find and reference the right answer no matter where it appears.

A small behind-the-scenes improvement to our internal product analytics.

Nothing changes in how NavEd looks or works today.

Entering grades is more forgiving.

If you typed a grade with a percent sign, like "95%", the gradebook used to reject the whole save and show a confusing message. Now it simply reads "95%" as 95, so your grades save the way you'd expect.

You can now also enter letter grades. Type "A" or "B+" and the gradebook records it using the middle of that grade's range from your school's grading scale, so you can grade the way that feels natural to you.

We also made the message clearer when an entry genuinely can't be read as a grade, and added a short reminder right above the gradebook so you always know what to type: a number (like 95 or 95%), a letter grade, or E for excused and M for missing.