Product

Pickup Circle

The school pickup line runs on group texts: "anyone getting their kid at 3? can you grab mine?" Pickup Circle is that conversation, made reliable, among parents who already know each other.

How it works

A parent posts that they are driving. They were going anyway — same school, same time, a seat or two spare. The post says which day and which pickup, and nothing about anyone's address.
Other parents in the circle ask. One tap: "grab mine too." The driver sees how many children, the times involved, and whether a booster seat is needed.
The driver accepts. Everyone involved is told, and the asking parent gets a plain answer — covered, or not — rather than watching a thread.
At the curb, the driver reads the card. Each child has a pickup card for that circle: first name, photo, the usual release time and spot, whether they need a booster, and any line the parent wrote, like a gate or a teacher's name.
If nobody confirms, the app says so. When a pickup time passes with no confirmation, the child's own parents get an alert carrying the driver's name and number so they can call, even if the app will not load on a crowded car park's signal.

What a circle is

A circle is a handful of families around one school or activity, and joining is by invitation with the owner's approval. There is no public directory, no way to search across circles, and no way to discover that a circle exists without being asked into it. A parent chooses who is in their circle, and chooses again each time they accept a particular driver for a particular day.

What it is not

Not a ride service. Drivers are other parents in the circle, not vetted, employed or insured by us, and the app says so the first time a parent asks for a ride rather than burying it in terms.
No money between parents. No fares, no reimbursement, no tipping. A trip that was already happening does not need a price.
No safety feature behind a payment. The alert when nobody confirms, and the card a driver reads at the curb, are part of the product and always will be.
No live tracking of children. The app records that a pickup happened; it does not follow anybody around a map.

What it keeps, and what it refuses to

A child has a first name, optionally a photo, whether they need a booster, a note for a driver and an emergency contact. Those are encrypted before they reach the database, with the key held by a separate service. There is no column anywhere in the database for a child's home address, so no release can quietly add one.

A circle has one meeting spot chosen on a map by its owner — a gate, a curb, a car park entrance — because a driver needs somewhere to go. It is never a home.

A notification on a lock screen says how many children an ask is for and the times involved. It never carries a child's name or photo. The one exception is the alert above, which carries an adult driver's name and number to a parent who already has it, because a parent who cannot reach a driver is the failure that actually hurts a child.

The full detail, written against the database rather than the marketing, is in the privacy notice.

Where it is now

Pickup Circle is in a closed pilot with families in Miami-Dade County, Florida, on invitation only. It runs in a web browser and installs to a phone's home screen; app store listings will follow once the pilot has taught us what to change.

If you want to hear when it opens up, or you run a school or activity and want to understand it before your families do, write to hello@thomascollective.org.