Introducing Informed K12...

Today, we're proud to officially begin operations as Informed K12. We help school district administrators operate efficiently and gain insight into their most critical school business processes.

Since its founding as Chalk Schools in 2012, the team at Informed K12 has worked closely with thousands of school district administrators around the country to improve productivity, accountability and equity.

What began as a simple tool intended to help take a school's paper forms online, has now evolved into a mission-critical workflow solution that enables school districts to increase the speed of how they operate, track paperwork along various approval chains across departments, and ultimately gain insight into how and where resources are going throughout the district.

It's been a great privilege for me to be part of this journey.

Here's why...

School districts are drowning in paperwork

A recent analysis of one top 100 school district conducted by policy and communications firm TSC2 Group found that the district processes about 18,000 human-resource forms by hand. “With the appropriate resources and priorities for spending these resources, the district could obtain technology automating these processes, thereby freeing administrators to reallocate time to analysis and decision-making more directly related to student achievement,” the report states.

This scenario is the norm, not the exception, for most school districts. However, improving these kinds of processes could impact everything from teacher hiring to student outcomes.

In fact, The Center for American Progress recently noted in their report A New Vision for School Accountability that:

“In many ways, district-level processes have the greatest impact on student outputs and outcomes. Districts control hiring, placements, and professional development processes.”

School business officials are on the front-lines of this problem

We live in the golden age of student information systems, human resources information systems, and learning management systems, and yet most school districts are still managing many critical school business processes on paper. Why?

Too many of the systems in place today either focus on a small set of processes for a single department, or they're too difficult for most people to adopt easily. However, beyond that there are too many silos across departments that make it difficult to standardize processes and leverage best practices.

Ironically, it's the back-office of most school district that's on the front-lines of this problem.

According to the Association of School Business Officials International, “From transportation to technology to facilities management, school business officials are involved in every aspect of education administration. They are responsible for helping to ensure that students have a way to get to school, feel safe in their classrooms, and have the supplies they need to learn and grow. Today, as school budgets are squeezed tighter than ever before, the role of the school business official has never been more challenging—or more important. Reduced budgets reveal the critical link between effective fiscal management and the availability of resources. This requires a skilled school business official who can maximize resources for learning while simultaneously reducing overall spending in schools.”

For school business officials, including finance, operations and HR managers, each area of responsibility comes with a new stack of paperwork to be completed. And, the need to run a professional, dependable operation is critical to their success.

But, it's not just a back-office problem

Educators are wasting too much time, money and effort on managing back-office processes and diverting precious resources away from supporting teaching and learning.

According to The National Council for Teacher Quality's annual Great Districts for Great Teachers study, school district management and operations is one of the greatest factors contributing to teacher satisfaction and retention. They note:

For teachers, access to basic supplies and adequate facilities can have a personal and professional impact. 

Decades of teacher surveys document the substantial amount of money that teachers spend to buy their own supplies every year. [1] Recent estimates suggest that the average teacher spends as much as $500 of their own money each year, with around 10 percent of teachers spending $1,000 or more. [2] With over 92 percent of teachers spending out of pocket on supplies, [3] district efforts to improve the availability of instructional supplies could have an effect in practically every classroom. 

Likewise, maintenance of clean, adequate facilities sends teachers and students a signal about the district's investment in student learning and contributes to a positive school climate. [4] Facility quality, as measured by teacher perception surveys, also influences student achievement, suggesting that district investments in infrastructure might make life a little easier for students and teachers alike. [5]

In order to perform at their best, school districts must bring order to chaos.

For this reason, perhaps, the American Association of School Administrators recommends comprehensive standards of evaluation for school superintendents’ performance -- and by implication school performance -- that include operational KPIs around policy and governance, communications and community relations, organizational management and human resources management.

While most recognize the importance of these operational measures, few would deny that most school superintendents would prefer to dedicate more of their time and attention to developing an instructional vision for their schools rather than managing operations. However, when left unattended, these operational issues could start to distract them from their primary goals of improving teaching and learning and delivering better student outcomes.

Today’s superintendent needs a seamless operational infrastructure that will allow their school site and central office staff to focus on what matters most.

Less paperwork, more people work

While each school district is unique and each department within each school district has different needs, there are a few universal challenges facing school district administrators when it comes to managing back-office processes efficiently. These processes include:

• Transmission of time-sensitive information needed for securing resources or planning events. These forms often have a critical due date or activity date, like a trip or event date. They can be difficult to rush approvals or rush order when last minute requests are received. And, administrators and staff would benefit from a firm and thoughtful confirmation process to ensure this work gets completed.
• Support of vital communication between school sites and central offices. These processes often involve teachers and staff waiting for approval before they can take action. They often involve critical services and take time for high level administrators to sign and review, and there is shared responsibility across multiple offices and departments.
• Meeting local, state and federal compliance guidelines for management of data. These processes carry important information that needs to be reported on or audited. Forms needed to support these processes collect required data that must be accurate and/or complete, and come with substantial demands for data retrieval, documentation, and lookup.
• Tracking completion of certain tasks in order to protect against legal liability. Workflow associated with these kinds of processes requires that school or district administrators verify consent and knowledge for people who have received (keys, computers, etc.), or verify consent and knowledge for people who are taking on risk (drivers, construction workers, etc.).
• Managing paperwork that comes in large volumes during peak times of the year. These processes require tracking parents or staff down for missing information and corrections. They often have due dates and important information used for reference throughout the year, and they can take tremendous amounts of time and effort for everyone (recipients and staff) to complete.

Unlock the potential of your paperwork

Within each piece of paper in a district there's valuable information about where resources are going and how much time it takes to accomplish a task. The consequence of not having insight into these processes could be anything from teachers not being hired on time to supplies and support materials not going to students that need them most.

Here's how we can help:

It's time to move beyond simply managing paperwork. Through automation and analysis, school districts can tap into a world of insights and ultimately improve performance.

P.S. We're hiring.