Don’t forget about Daniel’s soccer practice at 4 p.m. Tomorrow is a half day at school, remember to arrange a pickup. Annie has a dance rehearsal at 6 p.m. on Friday night, don’t be late! Family schedules seem to be busier than ever, especially in a town like Rockaway. But don’t let it become overwhelming. Have a seat on the Park Bench and let Rockaway’s newest family assistant app make it all a little easier for you.
When Clare Gehrhardt’s fourth-grade daughter started signing up for “every sport known to man” last year, the Rockaway mom of two suddenly found herself juggling emails, texts, calendars and seemingly endless apps just to figure out where everyone in her family needed to be. “I really found myself just drowning in the communication clutter for each sport, and I was thinking to myself, there has to be a better way to streamline this,” Gehrhardt said. “And that’s where Park Bench was born.”
Realizing she couldn’t be the only one struggling, Gehrhardt started to think of other parents, especially those in Rockaway with multiple kids on different schedules, and how they must relate. So, the mom, who works as a product manager in the delivery platform group for Intercontinental Exchange, took her tech knowledge and started to build a phone app that could put that family communication clutter all in one place. “It organizes your family members’ schedules, events, reminders, all in one shared calendar,” Gehrhardt said.
How does it work? “For the calendar function, the app syncs to any shared calendar you have today, so like Google Calendar, iCal, etc. You could also subscribe to schedules and put them into your calendar, so like, if you have an app for a sports team, you can also sync that,” she explained.
Park Bench NYC also has a chat feature to utilize to include events that aren’t easily synced. “For any other type of calendar that you need, whether it’s info from a text message, an Instagram post, an email, what you can do is just take a screenshot of that, put it into the chat, and then the chat will add it to your calendar,” she said.
But wait, there’s more. The app has a feature called Circles for specific calendars, for instance, the P.S. 114 PTA Circle. “Basically, what we did was share what events are going on for the year that are on the PTA website. Then we put it as a calendar that you could subscribe to and called that a Circle. With that, you can get information automatically and now you know that on the second day of school there’s a dress-down day,” Gehrhardt said. She’s even created a Rockaway Circle. “There’s a Circle I have this summer, which I think will resonate with Rockaway people, that reminds you to pull your car in. I had a schedule of like, Friday night at 8 p.m., pull your car in for weekend parking rules. Then for certain holidays, like Juneteenth was on a Thursday, so it sent out reminders on Wednesday night,” she said. “You can create your own circles.” That means coaches can create team practice and game schedules, schools can have their own public schedules to let families know things like when school is closed, a dance school can let parents know when rehearsals and recitals are, and more.
The app also offers a Discover feature where parents can find fun things to do across the city to fill in gaps when there’s free time. “The data reflects like 700 New York City-based institutions and places of interest. So there, you can search for events that you might like for your family, so there’s a page where we recommend events that you might like, and then another where you can go looking for events to add to the calendar,” she said.
Need certain reminders? The app sends you updates for the next day and reminders for the week ahead. “Every night we send an update to say like…’this is your day ahead tomorrow.’ In that, it includes what the weather is going to be like, and if you have any gaps in your schedule, or let’s say, you don’t have someone to pick up your kid from soccer, it’ll remind you to make sure somebody’s there,” Gehrhardt said. “There’s also a portion that says ‘looking ahead,’ so if you have a birthday party on Friday and it’s Monday, we’ll send an update saying you have a party on Friday, make sure you order a gift. It’s really trying to take that pressure off of parents, so a lot of people have enjoyed that capability.”
Since parenting often requires a village, Park Bench gives you a way to connect them, too. “You can share this app with your partner or caregiver. So like a grandparent can get on the app and see the schedule and you can add something like, ‘grandma is doing school pickup on Tuesdays and Thursdays,’ and they will also get those reminders,” she said. There are also security measures and privacy settings to make sure schedules don’t fall into the wrong hands.
The best part? It’s free. Currently Park Bench is only available to Apple users, but there are plans to broaden it to other platforms.
And many parents are already making use of it. According to Gehrhardt, about 92 families have taken a seat on the Park Bench so far and are making good use of the app in its pilot stage.
One such parent is Bianca Brosh, who said it saved her daughter the hassle of missing a dance rehearsal for this year’s Irish Festival. “I started using the app and it helped me discover things to do for our family, but my daughter does Irish dancing with O’Malley’s Irish Dance Academy. They’re out and about in March, and they have year-long practices and competitions and the Irish Festival. The director sends out dozens of emails and sometimes I miss them. My daughter was signed up for the Irish Festival, and I had missed the email about the rehearsal an hour before, but luckily the app notified me, and we rushed out the door. The app is trying to alleviate this pressure on parents, so you don’t miss a note like that.”
Gehrhardt hopes that more people download and sign up for Park Bench locally and beyond, so they too, can benefit from the app that makes parenting a bit easier. “Right now, we launched it in Rockaway and it’s New York City focused, but I don’t think anything prevents us from going to other metropolitan areas. I think all parents run into the same problems. So the goal is to extend this and make it a full-fledged business,” Gehrhardt explained.
In the meantime, Rockaway is welcome to get on Park Bench and make juggling family schedules a breeze. Download Park Bench on the Apple App store, check out www.parkbench.nyc for more info and follow @ParkBench.NYC on Instagram.
Photos by Julia Xanthos Liddy.
