Nebraska Success Story Elkhorn Public Schools
Elkhorn Public Schools · Public School District
“Having Helper Helper attached to ClassLink is a huge help, as our students are able to access so many things on there, making it more visual and easily accessible. Students are already on their phones constantly and are much more tech savvy than even just ten years ago. This platform helps with things like NHS and major scholarships that are offered in our district. We will most likely run into less of ‘I wrote it down but misplaced my sheet.’”
Elkhorn Public Schools serves the fast-growing suburbs on Omaha's western edge, with three high schools: Elkhorn, Elkhorn South, and Elkhorn North, which opened in 2020. Service hours matter there for two reasons. National Honor Society chapters expect them, and the Elkhorn Public Schools Foundation's ACHIEVE scholarships ask seniors for 50, 75, or 100 documented hours. The district's goal, in the words of counselor Jess Hoskins, was to “help students keep track of hours better,” because paper forms came with a familiar problem: “I wrote it down but misplaced my sheet.”
The district connected Helper Helper to ClassLink, so students sign in with the account they already use for everything else and rosters stay in sync on their own. “Having Helper Helper attached to ClassLink is a huge help,” Hoskins says, “as our students are able to access so many things on there, making it more visual and easily accessible.” Students who are “already on their phones constantly” log hours as they go, and when NHS or the ACHIEVE application comes due, “plenty of students” are “more than ready to submit hours.” The Foundation accepts a student's Helper Helper record in place of its paper documentation form, so the verified transcript goes straight into the application.
Integration Highlight: Elkhorn Public Schools connects Helper Helper to ClassLink, so students at all three high schools open it from the same launchpad as the rest of their school apps, with no separate password, and rosters sync automatically as students enroll and graduate.
How Helper Helper Supports Nebraska Schools
Getting Started
Helper Helper integrates directly with the student information systems (SIS) and single sign-on (SSO) providers your school already uses, including Google for Education, Microsoft, PowerSchool, ClassLink, Canvas, and more. Students sign in with their existing school credentials and rosters sync automatically.
Already tracking hours in spreadsheets, a homegrown database, or another platform? We'll import your existing data into Helper Helper at no additional charge so students don't lose credit for hours they've already completed.
Same-Day Support from Real People
No chatbots or ticket queues. When you need help, you’ll hear back the same day from Krista, Chelsea, or Matt. Our team knows schools and provides guided onboarding and Zoom trainings to get your program up and running.
Simple, Affordable Pricing
Helper Helper starts at $500 per year for up to 200 students and includes everything you need. Additional students cost $2.50 per student per year.
- Hour verification & reporting
- Goal tracking & real-time progress
- Service portfolios for students
- iOS, Android & web apps
Schedule a Demo
Pick a time that works for you. We’ll walk through how Helper Helper can serve your school or district and answer any questions you may have.
HECVAT-assessed, FERPA-compliant, encrypted in-transit and at-rest, hosted on AWS infrastructure.
This designation benefits both parties: for your school or district, it means you can deploy Helper Helper without the administrative burden of collecting individual parent consent for every student — the same way you onboard other essential technology platforms. For Helper Helper, it means we are held to the same strict data-handling standards as your own employees, giving your community confidence that student records are protected by the full weight of federal privacy law.
The FTC provides guidance confirming that schools may consent on behalf of parents in the educational context under COPPA. Please request to see our Notice of Data Practices for Children Under 13 and our Privacy Policy for further details.
The HECVAT was developed by the higher education community (EDUCAUSE) and is widely used by colleges and universities to assess the IT security, data protection, and privacy practices of third-party software vendors before adoption. While originally designed for higher ed, its comprehensive framework is equally valuable for K–12 schools and districts looking for a rigorous, standardized way to evaluate whether a vendor meets their security and compliance requirements.
AWS operates the most widely adopted and trusted cloud infrastructure in the world, with security practices that meet or exceed the requirements of federal agencies, financial institutions, and healthcare providers. Their data centers are protected by 24/7 on-site security, biometric access controls, redundant power and networking, and continuous monitoring.
AWS is independently audited against the most rigorous standards in the industry — including SOC 1, SOC 2, SOC 3, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, and PCI DSS — and provides industry-leading uptime guarantees backed by a 99.99% service-level agreement. This means your school can count on Helper Helper being available when students and advisors need it.
Administrators can be scoped to specific groups, schools, grade levels, or graduating classes — an NHS advisor sees only their NHS members, a school principal sees only their school, and a district coordinator sees the full district.
Outside community partners receive organization admin roles that let them post their own volunteer opportunities, manage sign-ups, and confirm attendance for events they host, without any visibility into student records, other organizations’ events, or school-internal data.
Helper Helper is fully FERPA-compliant, giving your community confidence that student records are protected by the full weight of federal privacy law. We never sell or share student data.
For Nebraska schools, we sign your district's Student Data Privacy Agreement and comply with FERPA and Nebraska's Student Online Personal Protection Act (Neb. Rev. Stat. §§ 79-2,153 to 79-2,155).
Nebraska Schools Using Helper Helper
One Platform for Every Nebraska Service Program
Nebraska schools recognize service in different ways, and many run more than one program at once. Helper Helper handles all of them in one place:
- Scholarship and honor society hours: set a goal for each threshold, whether that is a foundation scholarship tier or an NHS requirement, see who is on pace, and let students print a verified record when the application is due
- Catholic school service programs: give each grade its own requirement, use custom categories for the hours that must go to a particular kind of service, and ask students for reflections on what each experience meant to them
- Districts with several high schools: put each school and club on its own team, so counselors follow their own students while the central office reports across the district, with rosters kept current through ClassLink, Clever, or your SIS
- NHS, Key Club, and student groups: advisors track only their own members, post service projects with sign-ups, and check students in on site with a QR code or validation key
- Records that go with the student: every student leaves with a verified service transcript for college, scholarship, and job applications