Why FanAngel Fits SB 848 — and Why Most Platforms Will Fail It

SB 848 didn’t create new risks, it set expectations around supervision of digital communications that has been a challenge for schools for over a decade. 

This article explains where FanAngel comes from and how it’s designed to meet the new standard for athletics and extracurriculars.

1. The Problem SB 848 Puts Into Focus

For years, schools have relied on digital tools to run athletics and activities: texts about bus times, group chats for last‑minute changes, direct messages to share video or feedback. That communication is often necessary and helpful.

It is also structurally hard to supervise.

It happens after hours, off campus, and across personal devices and apps that were never designed for institutional oversight. Even well‑intentioned districts have struggled to see where all of this communication lives, let alone review it quickly when concerns arise.

SB 848 amends Education Code § 32100 to make those expectations explicit. It requires governing boards to:

• set “appropriate limits on contact” via social media, text, and other electronic channels, and
• adopt policies so that classroom and nonclassroom environments—including the digital spaces used for athletics and activities—are “easily supervised.”

In other words, the law did not invent a new risk. It codified what many leaders already knew: that digital staff–student communication must happen in environments the school can supervise and explain, not in private channels it can only piece together after the fact.

We’ve unpacked the legal language and practical meaning of “easily supervised” in other resources

(see: SB 848: What’s Required vs. What Schools Think It Requires and What “Supervision” Means in Practice Under SB 848)

In this article, the focus is narrower:

How FanAngel was designed, from the beginning, to keep extracurricular staff–student communication inside digital nonclassroom environments your district can actually supervise under SB 848.

2. What We Saw First-Hand

FanAngel was not created because SB 848 passed. It was created years earlier because of a failure that happened inside a school community where our founder was both a parent and a coach.

A teacher used personal SMS to groom students—entirely outside any system administrators could see or supervise.

In the aftermath:

• Policies were updated.
• Expectations were restated.
• A communication platform was approved.

On paper, the district had done the right things. In practice, adoption and enforcement were uneven:

• One school moved most staff onto the approved tools.
• Another struggled to enforce adoption at all.
• In extracurricular programs—where communication is frequent, informal, and time‑sensitive—coaches reverted to whatever was fastest: texts, group chats, consumer apps.

Even within the same district, oversight depended more on individual leaders and habits than on any consistent system. Blind spots remained, especially around direct messages and after‑hours communication.

The lesson was not “we need more policy.” It was:

• “The tools staff actually use must be designed to be adopted in extracurricular contexts, and they must keep communication inside digital environments the school can supervise, not on personal phones and private DMs.”

FanAngel was built in direct collaboration with that district to address adoption, oversight, and enforcement at the system level, not by adding another policy or one‑off rule.

3. What “Easily Supervised” Requires in Practice

“Easily supervised” is not defined in the statute. But in practice, districts that can defend their approach under SB 848 tend to have digital environments where:

• Institutional visibility exists
  Administrators (not just individual staff) can see who is communicating with which students, including one‑to‑one conversations, without relying on screenshots or personal devices.
• One‑to‑one messages have a supervised home
  Direct staff–student communication doesn’t disappear into personal texts or unsupervised DMs. It happens inside a school‑governed system that keeps it visible, reviewable, and retained.
• Records are centralized and immutable
  Messages are captured in a tamper‑resistant audit log the institution controls. Individual users can’t selectively delete or hide conversations.
• Access is timely and predictable
  When a concern arises, relevant messages can be located and reviewed quickly—without guesswork about which app or account was used.
• Oversight survives churn
  As coaches, volunteers, seasons, and rosters change, the environment remains supervisable. Communication history and norms don’t leave with individuals.

That is the operational meaning of an “easily supervised” digital nonclassroom environment.

(For a fuller treatment and a practical self‑diagnostic, see: What “Supervision” Means in Practice Under SB 848 and SB 848 Compliance Failure Matrix: Where Communication Platforms Break Down)

4. Why Common Platform Categories Struggle

Most tools in use today weren’t designed with that standard in mind. They solve other problems well, but they struggle to keep extracurricular communication easily supervised.

Consumer social and messaging apps

Tools like Instagram, WhatsApp, GroupMe, Discord, and Snapchat are built around:

• personal accounts
• frictionless private messaging
• overlapping networks of friends, followers, and direct connections that the school does not control (aka “social graphs”)

They make side 1:1 messages between staff and students natural and invisible to the institution. Even if group spaces look transparent, real risk lives in private threads the schools cannot govern or reliably access.

Team-social apps (e.g., Band, SportsYou)

Team-social platforms feel closer to the need: they offer group chats, schedules, and announcements. But they still:

• organize around social graphs and “friending”
• allow side DMs as a core mechanic
• fragment communication across groups, sub-groups, and private threads

Logging and visibility toggles often exist, but they do not close the architectural gaps where one-to-one communication escapes institutional oversight. The result is partial visibility and conditional auditability—fragile under SB 848 scrutiny.

SB 848 is tested under churn, stress, and imperfect configuration—not ideal use—so architectures that only become “supervisable” when perfectly set up tend to fail when supervision is actually needed.

(For more detail, see: Why Team-Social Apps Struggle with SB 848 Oversight)

Classroom communication platforms (e.g., ParentSquare)

Classroom‑first platforms are anchored to student information systems and are excellent at:

• teacher‑to‑class messaging
• school‑to‑family announcements
• stable, rostered communication

They assume:

• relatively static groups
• one‑to‑many communication
• communication that fits into the school day

Extracurricular programs are different: rosters shift, groups form and dissolve mid‑season, and messages spike around travel, injuries, and last‑minute changes. In that reality, staff often step outside classroom tools into texts, group chats, or team‑social apps—precisely where supervision is hardest.

(For more, see: Can Classroom Communication Platforms Govern Extracurriculars Under SB 848)

FanAngel was built specifically for the extracurricular, after‑hours context where these other categories become hard to supervise.

5. How FanAngel Is Built for SB 848 Oversight

FanAngel’s design starts from a simple premise:

In extracurricular programs, staff–student communication—especially one‑to‑one—must happen inside a system the school can easily supervise, not in private side channels.

We think about oversight in three phases.

Before Something Goes Wrong: Pattern Visibility

Administrators shouldn’t have to read every message. What matters is the ability to see patterns that warrant attention early enough to act:

• repeated one‑to‑one contact with a particular student
• communication that crosses or erodes appropriate staff–student boundaries
• patterns that escalate in frequency, tone, or intensity over time

FanAngel:

• keeps centralized records of communication across teams and seasons
• uses its Guardian system to surface relationship‑level patterns—signals that something may deserve a closer look—while there is still time to intervene appropriately.

This is not keyword scanning for isolated terms; it’s situational awareness across staff–student relationships and all activities within a school.

During Active Communication: Enforceable Boundaries

Policies often assume perfect behavior. Real systems have to assume pressure, fatigue, and habit.

FanAngel treats direct staff–student communication as a distinct, governed context:

• One-to-one messages happen inside a supervised DM environment, not in personal text threads or unsupervised messaging apps
• Communication paths are constrained by design—for example, which adults can message which students, and under what conditions
• Safeguards (like routine visibility for athletic directors or administrators) apply automatically; staff don’t have to remember to include the “right” people

Rules are defined centrally and applied consistently across teams. Individual coaches or volunteers cannot quietly opt out of safeguards through local configuration choices.

After the Fact: Confidence, Not Reconstruction

When a concern arises, the question is no longer what should have happened; it’s what did happen.

FanAngel provides:

• a single, authoritative record of staff–student communication inside the system
• the ability to search across users, groups, and time
• centralized, tamper‑resistant logs that don’t depend on staff exporting or forwarding messages.

Administrators don’t have to reconstruct which app was used or rely on personal devices. They can answer basic questions—“Who messaged whom, when, and how?”—quickly and confidently.

Taken together, these design choices keep extracurricular communication inside a digital environment the school can easily supervise—before, during, and after issues arise.

6. The Design Choices We Made on Purpose

From the beginning, we made a set of deliberate trade-offs about how staff–student communication should be governed—trade-offs that run counter to many modern communication products. The most important include:

No social graph or friending

FanAngel does not use friending or open social networks between users.

• Communication happens in defined contexts—teams, groups, roles—rather than through evolving personal networks
• That removes hidden adjacency paths and makes it clear who can contact whom, and why

This simplifies oversight and keeps boundaries understandable.

No advertising or engagement incentives

FanAngel is not ad‑supported and is not optimized for time‑on‑platform.

• We avoid feeds and mechanics designed to maximize attention
• Communication is a means to an end (coaching, coordination, leadership), not the end itself

Incentives stay aligned with the institution, not with advertisers or engagement metrics.

Centralized, restrictive configuration

FanAngel prioritizes central administration of communication rules:

• Safeguards are defined at the institutional level and applied consistently
• Individual staff cannot unilaterally change which protections apply
• Oversight does not depend on remembering to set things up “the right way” on each team

This intentionally trades flexibility for governability—because in adult-to-student communication, systems that optimize for flexibility consistently fail supervision at scale.

7. How to Evaluate Any Platform Under SB 848

SB 848 does not mandate a specific platform. It does expect that when staff and students communicate electronically—especially one‑to‑one—it happens in digital environments your institution can:

• easily supervise
• explain 
• and stand behind when questions arise

Whatever tools you use, it’s worth asking:

• Can we see, without relying on personal devices, which staff are communicating with which students—including one‑to‑one messages?
• Do one‑to‑one conversations have a supervised home, or do they inevitably move into unsupervised DMs and texts?
• Can we retrieve relevant records quickly and confidently if a concern is raised, without guesswork or reconstruction across multiple apps?
• Will our model of oversight still work when coaches, seasons, and rosters change?

FanAngel was built so districts can answer those questions clearly in extracurricular and after‑hours contexts, where risk, pressure, and complexity are highest.

What SB 848 makes clear is that some architectures can be defended under scrutiny, and others cannot—regardless of policy intent.

If you choose a different path, we hope this framework helps you test whether your digital nonclassroom environments will remain easily supervised when oversight is actually tested—not just when policies are drafted.

(for an in-depth breakdown on the decision criteria above, see Governing Staff-Student Communication at Scale)