Improve Efficiency by Using Every Feature of Your SIS

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When you work at a school district, every day you hear about the need to be more efficient. As a public servant, you not only have pressure from within the organization to do more with less, you also have pressure from your taxpayers.

There are many ways a school district can do more with less. One that is often overlooked is to improve the use of your Student Information System (SIS). Are you using all of the tools in the application to make your district more efficient?

The end of the year is close upon us and now is a good time to evaluate what your SIS can do and what business practices your district can change to increase efficiency. If your SIS includes the following functions, ask yourself how you can use them to increase efficiency and communication in your district:

  • Parent Portal – use this tool to publish information about students in a timely fashion
  • Parent Portal Update – allow parents or guardians to update student or contact information, saving data-entry time on your end
  • Student Portal – use this tool to keep your students abreast of their own progress
  • Email Notifications – notify staff about health, enrollment, registration, withdrawals, and schedule changes automatically
  • Messages – use the messaging system within the application to notify staff and students quickly and clearly
  • Event Calendar – keep staff, parents, and students in the loop and reduce questions and calls
  • Communication Log – track source and follow-up regarding students
  • Student Portfolios – store student paper records on line for ease of access; no going to the file cabinet.  Health records, art work, major homework assignments, you name it.
  • Document Management – store documents and catalog automatically per student.  Report cards, transcripts, letters, etc.

We all know the importance of communication as a means to increase efficiency.  Seizing the opportunity to use technology available to you as a district is key to improving the way your organization uses resources.  We know that it takes time to implement and develop business plans to make sure administrators, staff, students, and parents know how to use this technology. But taking that time will result in increased efficiency and will make your annual license fees work even harder for you.

Challenging the Status Quo Pays Big Rewards for One Vermont School District

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“In government, as in most realms of life, we find it safer and easier to do what we’ve always done, simply because we’ve always done it. Only on rare occasions, usually at times of crisis, do we step back to gain a broader perspective, erase all our preconceived ideas and routine behaviors, and take a fresh look at how to make the most of our limited time and resources.”

-Peter Hutchinson, Public Strategies Group

A school district in Vermont that I met with not too long ago told me that they had recently faced a big question: “Do we keep doing things the same way with our limited resources while demands become greater, or do we dare to challenge what we are doing?”

With an old accounting software system, limited resources, offline processes, and ever-increasing demands for information, they decided to push forward and see what they could change instead of staying put. They believed that they could improve.

The first step they took was to talk to their employees. They researched why their administrative team was feeling overwhelmed with managing information, why their staff was forced to create manual time-intensive ways to address gaps in reporting, and why some information took weeks to produce. They ultimately determined that they could do things better and more efficiently.

The administration decided it was time to put their inefficient processes under scrutiny. How were they developing the budget? How could they reduce paper use and automate the purchasing process? How did they record employees’ time and attendance? Most importantly, how could the district better manage and share information with everyone?

Asking these questions paid off.

The results they found determined that they could save MORE THAN 2,459 HOURS of employee time every school year by simply changing their workflows. They found ways to save the district’s approximately 1.3 FTE’s working at a full forty hours every year!

But it gets even better.

The time savings they experienced in simply changing how they did things resulted in more than enough savings for them to be able to purchase a new state-of-the-art accounting software system. The return on their investment with the new system started paying them back in the first year!

Now that’s a win for everyone in the school district, thanks to putting in the hard work to challenge the status quo!

Cloud Considerations: Renting vs. Buying

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In a previous post, we mentioned that there’s nothing worse than having an unexplained acronym thrown at you by an industry insider. So I’m going to start this post by defining SaaS – “software as a service,” something that you may hear people refer to in the same breath that they say they are “moving to the cloud.”  Traditionally, clients purchased software and installed it on their client-owned hardware. This is like buying a house: the owner is now responsible for the maintenance, upkeep and repairs. Moving to a cloud-based solution is like renting a house. Though you get the same end-user experience (you get to use the software, or you get to live in the home), you share the responsibility for the upkeep of the product with someone else, in this case, the SaaS host. When a client uses SaaS hosting they use the software over the internet, while the hardware hosting the program is owned by the hosting company. This eliminates the need for purchasing the software and related costly infrastructure.

From a financial perspective, SaaS arrangements also offer clients some benefits.

  1. Moving to cloud-based solutions reduces the upfront investment needed for new software and the supporting infrastructure.  It’s possible that a SaaS arrangement may change the required budgetary approval for the expenditure from a capital to an operational cost.  This shift may facilitate the approval process for investing in new software.
  2. The cost of maintenance and upgrades for both hardware and software are included in the monthly SaaS charge.  Applying this concept to the rented house analogy, not only does the renter get the use of a home, the house is continually maintained and improved over the contract term. This allows you to always have use of fully functioning software without having to worry about hidden support costs.
  3. Ongoing costs under SaaS contracts are predictable and can be anticipated in annual operating budgets.

Other financial advantages include:

  1. Infrastructure staffing costs may be reduced.  In addition to the cost, risk may be reduced because the service is provided by a team of dedicated professionals.
  2. Future infrastructure investments required to maintain, upgrade or replace the environment are eliminated.
  3. Space needed for infrastructure is reduced.

Moving to cloud-based solutions might not be right for every client.  However, the option should be considered when evaluating K-12 software purchase decisions.

IRS Regulation 6050W

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During a recent trip to a school district in the mid-Atlantic, I overheard two AP clerks lamenting the difficulties they were having in getting the 1099-MISC forms out the door in a timely fashion.  Being new to procurement cards, they were sifting through a number of transactions made to vendors with only a casual association to the district.  Fearing that they were responsible for 1099 reporting, IRS regulation 6050W was able to brighten their day.

Beginning in 2011, the IRS shifted the burden of 1099 reporting for procurement card transactions from the card user (the school district) to the credit card company (VISA, Mastercard etc.).  Originally designed as a mechanism to capture income reporting for large on-line sellers or services such as EBay, 6050W has had the unintended consequence of saving school districts from reporting for their procurement card transactions.

Given that procurement card usage continues to grow throughout school systems nationwide, we should see a proportionate drop in 1099-MISC reporting.  In fact, one business manager recently commented to me that she had ratcheted her procurement card usage up to 80% of all AP transactions, and had correspondingly dropped her 1099-MISC forms to under a dozen.

Is Regulation 6050W something you were made aware of at your school district? Have you changed your procurement card usage because of it? Let us know in the comments.

“Lessons Learned” is a Daily Mentality

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I was recently listening to the news, when the story was interrupted by an advertisement for a local hospital. A mature and wise-sounding man shared his thoughts: “I like to learn lessons. I learn something every day and it keeps me alive!” This message resonated with me, because I am a believer in “Lessons Learned,” a way of thinking that helps keep me alive and keeps my work improving.

What is this way of thinking, exactly? Basically it boils down to this: we all learn something new every day and we should take time to reflect on our “Lessons Learned” – on the wisdom we have gained over time, and on the things we learned the hard way.

Everyone and anyone can benefit from the daily practice and mentality of “Lessons Learned.” When we live by this philosophy, our organizations grow stronger, our teams are better cultivated and individual staff members recognize that their team cares about the quality of their work and the quality of the processes which impact their work environment.

Of course we don’t live in a world where no one ever repeats past mistakes. However, we can try to improve our behavior by instigating “Lessons Learned” discussions with our teammates and coworkers. In these discussions, the goal is to answer some broad questions: Do we practice what we know to be true? Do we share what we’ve learned? Do we act upon these “Lessons Learned” to improve our business practices and avoid repeating our past mistakes?

As leaders, it’s our responsibility to facilitate these “Lessons Learned” discussions, inspire people to engage in these discussions and effectively identify actions to improve. Most people will not do this on their own. Oh, no, they’ll complain about what went wrong, and whose fault it was. But most will not turn the problem into a learning opportunity – they just insert it into the complaint box!

So what can you do? Hear their complaint, and then challenge this complaint. What was the root cause? What can we do better in the future? How do we make this happen? Who will make this happen? When will this happen?

“Lessons Learned” discussions should not be isolated to criticisms of the mistakes that have been identified; we can also learn lessons from the things we have done well. Where have we achieved our greatest successes and why were we successful? The tangible factors contributing to the success should be identified and incorporated into the best business practice. Encourage your team to do everything possible to repeat past successes.

As a leader within the school community, you are likely already doing this and, if so, I applaud your efforts. This behavior makes you are a role model within your organization and the school community as a whole.

The practice of “Lessons Learned” should be more than a periodic exercise. “Lessons Learned” should be a daily mentality. It all circles back to the words of the aforementioned man in the commercial – “I like to learn lessons. I learn something every day and it keeps me alive!”

What lessons have you learned today? Ask yourself – who else can benefit from my “lesson learned”? It’s your responsibility to share your growing wisdom!

If your school district is actively implementing a SIS solution for the start of the 2013-2014 academic year, below is our May 1st SIS Implementation status report.

Congratulations on your accomplishments thus far!

Project tasks likely completed by 5/1/2013:
Data Conversion Progress √
System Administration & System Setup Training Series √
End User Training √
eLearning Planning √
Start of School Support Planning √
Communicate to SIS Project Stakeholders on Project Progress and Training Plans √
Celebrate April accomplishments!!

Project tasks planned for 5/1/2013-5/31/2013:
Data Conversion Progress – Prepare for end of school year data transfer tasks    (Academic History, Health, Discipline, Test Scores, etc.)
End User Training , continued
Integration Configuration and Testing
Grade Reporting Configuration and Testing
Communication to SIS Project Stakeholders on Project Progress, Training Plans and Go Live Plans
Celebrate May Accomplishments!!

The eLearning Revolution

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There is currently a not-so-quiet revolution in teaching and learning sweeping the planet. Called eLearning, it challenges the premise that teaching and learning happen only in classrooms and conference rooms designed for that purpose. eLearning has become a $52 billion industry and is predicted to reach $107 billion by 2015.

There are many definitions of eLearning and several spellings of the term itself. For our purposes, we’ll use this definition until it evolves again: “The delivery of a learning, training or education program by electronic means. elearning involves the use of a computer or electronic device (e.g. a mobile phone) in some way to provide training, educational or learning material.” (Derek Stockley)

Companies are applying eLearning principles to new staff training, to enhance the adoption of new technology. Let’s first look at what some of the futurists are saying about teaching and learning in the 21 century:

“The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be the only sustainable competitive advantage.” – Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline

“We need to bring learning to people instead of people to learning.” Elliott Masie, Futurist, Analyst, Researcher

After reading a great deal of current research, I can safely say that:

  1. eLearning is, and should be, a major component of most corporate and school training programs
  2. eLearning in and of itself is not automatically successful. If instruction is bad, it doesn’t get any better with technology. It just impacts more people.

Companies have started to incorporate eLearning principles into their processes. Interactive eLearning lessons have been created and successfully implemented for school teachers and administrators. These short simulations take a user through activities such as taking attendance or adding grades. Unlike a demonstration, these eLessons require mouse and keyboard entry with feedback throughout the lessons. Some apply short quizzes for the user once the lesson is completed. Not only does the user know whether he/she has mastered the material, but reports can be generated to allow an administrator to see who has taken what lessons and how they performed. These eLessons are available 24 hours a day. This means that a teacher who trained in August on how to post grades at the end of a marking period, but doesn’t need to do it until October, can run through the eLearning lesson when the end of the marking period arrives. This is On-Demand learning at its best.

Schools have provided the following feedback on eLearning initiatives:

  1. At the beginning of the year, going to every campus in the district to train teachers results in the highest adoption rates.
  2. Making eLearning videos mandatory for new or returning teachers provides consistency in processes.
  3. Tracking Reports are valuable to keep track of teacher progress through the eLearning lessons.
  4. Announcements reminding teachers to complete eLearning lessons are appreciated.
  5. eLearning results in dramatically fewer support calls to school support staff.
  6. Teachers are using more functions in their software.
  7. The use of the eLearning videos can often become the sole method of training new teachers.
  8. Districts found that the eLearning lessons combined with documentation made additional training unnecessary.
  9. eLearning helps the start of the school year run smoother.

As stated earlier, there is currently a not-so-quiet revolution in teaching and learning sweeping the planet. And it is a revolution you should be considering.

Measuring the Value that Teachers Contribute to their Classrooms

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There is a strong trend in education to strengthen the way that teacher performance is evaluated.  In most states, this usually means evaluating teachers on the performance of their students.  Obviously, this is a very difficult thing to do.  Schools have the source data to do this by using the master schedule in the student system and dozens of assessment files containing student performance scores, but how do you transform all of this raw data into a format that can determine performance, and more importantly, how do you do it fairly?

In at least half of the states the legislature has mandated this type of teacher evaluation.  In most cases, the rules for those mandates are shallow and do a poor job of really determining how a teacher is performing.  For example, the predominant approach is to use the state NCLB testing for this evaluation by calculating the average percentage improvement of a teacher’s students on that test.  While this generates interesting information, it is very inaccurate and quite unfair.  Students in one teacher’s class may be mainly low performers, in another teacher’s class they may be mainly high performers.  So the same improvement in one class might be 5% for the high performers but 50% for the low performers.  Also, how do you adjust for the teacher that has five more students, or mostly non-English speakers?  These are areas that state legislatures have simply overlooked, or chosen to overlook because of the complexity to do otherwise.  However, any evaluation that is performed must be fair to be effective.

I would also suggest that there is a better reason to perform in-depth teacher evaluations than simply for performance evaluation purposes.  A good evaluation that uses accurate data will determine the strengths and weaknesses of a teacher.   A school administrator can align his or her staff much more effectively when they are aware of which teachers are better math or reading teachers, or which teachers are poor in those areas.  It is my experience when evaluating these areas that there is always a bell curve with any statistically large group of teachers.  It should be no surprise that every teacher has strengths and weaknesses.  Some simply teach math better than reading, some teach science better.  Also, some teachers simply get better overall results than others.  This does not mean that some teachers in every school are under performing.  While teachers may be ranked low compared to their peers, they may still be doing an acceptable job.

In Tyler Pulse we have taken all of these issues into consideration to create what we believe is one of the most advanced teacher evaluations possible.  The key to any good evaluation is to determine the incremental impact that the teacher has had on their student’s performance.    To do this, it is necessary to determine the historical annual improvement rates of the students in each teacher’s class, and then determine the difference between those and the improvement in the current year.  Then this result should be further adjusted by outside influences such as class size, student demographics, etc. In this way a fair evaluation can be performed.

This type of teacher review is very difficult and requires tons of data, but this is necessary to be fair and accurate.  We have taken this exact approach in Tyler Pulse.  As background, in Tyler Pulse we support a Student Assessments data model that tracks all assessment results that a student has over an unlimited time frame.  This model also uses this data to analyze student performance over time, but that is a subject for another posting.  Pulse also has access to the master schedule in the Student Information System, so Pulse is aware of each classroom, the subject being taught, the teacher(s) assigned to the class and the students in that class.  All of this data is combined into a single data set to perform quite a detailed analysis of the incremental value that teachers are contributing to their classrooms.

The following are some of the key factors that we evaluate with a research-based weighting scale.  This weighting scale may also be adjusted in each school district or state.  These factors include:

  • Both the percentage and raw point gain of students taught by each teacher. This is the first step toward leveling the various competency levels of each classroom.
  • The total percent of students taught by a teacher that have improved.  It is always interesting to note that in almost every evaluation we have done, there are always students that simply do not improve during a year of instruction.  These students should be marked for intervention programs.
  • The classroom size.  Teachers with 30 students in a room are simply stretched 5 students thinner than a teacher with 25 students in their room.
  • The average age level in the room.  Particularly in lower grade levels, a student in the bottom quartile of the age range in their grade will usually perform comparatively lower than students in the top quartile.  A nine or ten month age difference makes a real difference in the lower grade levels.
  • The average student “School Performance” rating of the students in the room.  This is a ranking to determine how a student is performing in their general school activities.  It includes adjustments for attendance, discipline, grades, assessments and much more.  A teacher with challenged students has a more difficult task than a teacher with many apples on their desk.
  • The demographics in the classroom.  How many non-English speakers are there, how many are Special Ed, how many are Title 1 or gifted?  Each of these factors has a distinct influence on teacher performance.
  • And most importantly, what is the historical performance of the students?  If a room of students historically performs at 50% of expectation, but this year they are performing at 75% of expectation, the teacher is doing an outstanding job, a 50% improvement.  In most evaluations this teacher would be rated low because the students were not meeting expectation.
  • Adjustments should also be made for students that did not test the appropriate number of times or enrolled in the teacher’s room half way into the school year.  It would simply not be fair, or accurate, to do otherwise.

The result of this analysis is that a school administrator now knows the strength of each teacher in the school.  Class assignments may now be made based on facts, via educated guessing.  Students simply perform better when this occurs.  Is it too much to expect better results when the best math teacher teaches math, instead of an average math teacher?  Doesn’t it make sense to align students with teachers based on their needs?

The purpose of ranking teachers in most state and district plans is to weed out under performing teachers.  But there is so much more to it than that.  No evaluation can ever be effective if it is not fair, and most simply are not.  Also, if the plan is fair and accurate, why couldn’t it be used to support better decision making?  I would suggest that the reason most of these evaluations are not used for operational planning is because the evaluators simply know their (lack of) value.  We are doing our best to change that.

Take Your Transportation Temp

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One of the things that I have always found to be helpful to me in my professional life is to treat my work the same way I do my body and my car: I give it an annual check-up. Taking a scheduled time to pause and reevaluate helps me make better decisions, and lets me get a heads up on expensive or dangerous problems I may face down the road.

Do you do the same thing for your yellow fleet? Maybe it’s time to schedule a regular check-up for your transportation program – to determine its operational efficiency (i.e. Health). Is it providing the highest quality services to students?

Let’s start with you, the employee in a school transportation office. The first question that needs to be answered is where are you in the life of your career? New on the job? Inherited someone else’s program? Been there forever? Stuck in neutral? Counting down to retirement? Somewhere in between? It is important that we take stock of our personal journey because each of these very real stages has implications for our programs. Our personal attitudes trickle down to the performance of our program every day we are on the job. Maybe you’re putting off a major process change because you expect to retire soon, or because you’re new on the job and need more time to evaluate the current program.

Next it would be good to remember how you got there. Did you come up through the ranks? Started as a bus driver? Transferred in from another district? Came from the outside? These kinds of paths often have a great effect on how we are viewed by those we must influence. If you moved up from a specific part of the workforce, such as a position as a bus driver, does that affect the way you prioritize your tasks? Do you put drivers ahead of other members of your staff, for example?

What’s going on with your program? Do any of these phrases sound familiar?

  • “We don’t need to change much because we always did it that way.”
  • “We are under tremendous pressure to cut.”
  • “There is a revolving door on this district and we never know which way is up.”

These kinds of reality checks give immediate clues on the ways you are likely to respond to the day to day issues. How is your workplace environment affecting your program decisions? Does it make you more or less likely to try new things or reform old problems?

Is the program improving? Try these thoughts on for size:

  • “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
  • “Everything seems OK because nothing much changes from year to year.”
  • “We are always looking for ways to improve.”
  • “We try to use the latest technology.”
  • “I aim to run my operation like a business.”

If your goal isn’t one of continuous improvement, then your check-up has uncovered a major problem. Being honest with this answer might allow you to get that long overdue reality check.

Are things going downhill? There are all the kinds of issues that sap your strength and energy every day:

  • Issues with morale
  • High driver turnover
  • Union problems
  • Parent complaints
  • Aging fleet
  • Tough boss
  • Do more with less

When the level of these problems rises above a dull roar there is a real danger of distraction from your ability to focus on safety and service. Where are these problems stemming from? What are you doing to prevent them?

Now for the tough questions: Where will your program be in five years? What will be different? Are you working to set yourself up for the future? Are you setting things up for your successor?

Here’s what it comes down to: Your ability to plan effectively for the future is critical to managing the tremendous responsibilities that come with the job of student transportation.

This is too important of a job to just go through the motions. Just like you do preventative maintenance on your buses and get your annual physical, take the time to take your program’s temperature. Step back from your program and look at it from an outsiders view. Hopefully, your check-up will be a good one!

Are my software systems talking to each other?

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How can the purchase of a new cell phone teach us a key lesson about acquiring K-12 technology? My recent transition from the iPhone to the Razor illustrates the challenge our clients face when replacing Student Information Systems, ERP Financial/HR applications, and Student Transportation software: configuring our applications to communicate with each other is vital but not always easy.

Learning the user interface of the Razor was simple. The hard part was configuring the various applications I rely on such as: email, calendar, contacts, travel itineraries, banking, and more. It would have been nice to call one support number to learn if my email connectivity mode was active versus Exchange.

The same connectivity challenges arise with K-12 software. Hiring a new teacher should be an automated process with data originating in the HR system and electronically moving to the Payroll system and the Student Information System (with proper workflow approvals, of course). A teacher who schedules a bus for a field trip should enter the request once and have the various software applications update the transportation schedule (Routing and Planning software) and department’s budget (ERP Financial software). At-risk student identification should take into account data from the Student Information System (grades, attendance, discipline, etc.), Assessment systems (state, local, and other assessment databases), ERP Financial/HR system (recent budget cuts, teacher tenure, etc.) and Transportation system (length of bus ride, incidents occurring on the bus, etc.).

Make sure you examine the software AND the ease of connectivity when making your final selection. And remember, when all your K-12 solutions come from the same vendor, you can make one support call!

Consolidation, KPIs, Efficiency – then what?

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Recently, the Lake Placid News ran an article reporting that two small districts in upstate New York – Lake Placid and Saranac Lake – were going to explore options for funding a consolidation study. A discussion at a joint meeting of the two schools boards teased out the idea that a third district – Tupper Lake – might also benefit from participation in the study. The article hinted that student transportation, business operations and curriculum, were all areas that could benefit from a combined administration. The consolidation of two small, local school districts would have been improbable just a few years ago; now it seems to be a foregone conclusion.

The Lake Placid News article is not headline news. It is simply the latest in a large stack of articles gathered from publications across the United States and Canada. These articles reflect the current reality of school boards having to respond to demands by their constituents to run their “businesses” more efficiently. Tax payers don’t want fewer educational opportunities for our children, they just don’t want to spend so much money to make it happen.

When this happens in the private sector, investors point to financial metrics like earnings per share or revenue dollars per employee. Calculating and then publishing these numbers allows companies to compare their performance to that of their competitors. But how is efficiency measured in a school district? The Council of the Great City Schools has attempted to answer this question with their “Managing for Results in America’s Great City Schools” project. This initiative provides over 300 key performance indicators (KPIs) which districts can use to measure their performance and gauge their “efficiency” through comparison of their performance to that of their peers.

Once a district can measure their performance through KPIs, they must then find ways to actually operate more efficiently. For example, they must figure out which schools can be closed while preserving as many educational programs as possible. They must figure out which bus routes can be cut while keeping ride times within state guidelines. And, they must figure out how to find these savings with fewer staff resources at their disposal.

How do they do this? Look for my next blog on Solutions for the Consolidating District to learn more.