Austin, Minnesota
4,575 Students
Austin Independent School District (ISD), serving 4,575 students in Austin, Minn., had been using SASI for their student information system (SIS) for 12 years. In 2008, it was announced that Pearson was going to end-of-life their product and no longer provide support. After using Infinite Campus for more than four years, they have seen a significant resource savings by effectively managing the learning process and making data collection and analysis more efficient.
Immediate Benefits
Eliminate Duplicate Data Entry
With their previous vendor, district data was kept in separate silos requiring each school to manage a different database. Since converting to Infinite Campus, Austin can clean up their data considerably. Duplicate students have been removed or merged and household information has been updated for census purposes. What once required multiple user logins is now reduced to a single login.
Attendance and the Portal
Before switching to Infinite Campus, Austin used numerous software programs for taking attendance and managing grades. The fully integrated attendance tool easily manages attendance taking, whether it’s in the office, the classroom or off-site with a mobile device. Attendance alerts can notify parents of unexcused absences or tardies. The Campus Portal provides parents and guardians with real-time access to attendance, as well as grades, assignments, school notices and more. It is also accessible from any Apple iOS or Android device and ‘push notifications’ allow parents to stay informed about their child’s academic progress.
The attendance module efficiently manages attendance while keeping parents aware of their student’s attendance status. “Infinite Campus is very intuitive and easy to use when it comes to attendance, grades and instructional planning,” said Haugen. “It saves time and provides accurate information for the collection, reporting and communication of attendance.”
Standardized Grading
Austin uses Infinite Campus to standardize their grading practices, including their nationally recognized Grading for Learning program and standards-based report cards. Infinite Campus helped Austin transition to a centralized enrollment process that has greatly enhanced data integrity and made enrollment easier for families new to the district.
Campus Community
Austin uses the Campus Community for the knowledge base, forum discussion, learning tools, news stories and support related questions. The Campus Community is an interconnected group of teachers, staff and administrators sharing knowledge, providing product tips and tricks, and promoting peer-to-peer networking among the entire user base. The user-friendly site is accessible through a single sign-on from the Infinite Campus system.
Campus Fees
Infinite Campus also improved Austin’s protocols regarding fee collection through Campus Fees. Campus Fees gives districts flexibility when managing costs associated with students, parents and staff for current, past due and future fees. Creating fee assignments, making payments, voiding transactions, making adjustments and adding comments is easy with the improved user interface.
Campus Scheduler 5.0
The Campus Scheduler 5.0 helps build more efficient schedules and fulfills more student requests than ever before. Austin auto-builds schedules from previous years with multiple scenarios for the upcoming one to optimize the coincidence of time, space, people and resources.
The Scheduler is designed from the ground-up to be an integral component of Infinite Campus SIS. It interacts with the wealth of information in the Campus database from within the Course Planner and Staff Planner, eliminating the need to flip back and forth between the Schedule Wizard and the regular SIS GUI.
Messenger with Voice
Messenger with Voice, a Campus Premium Product, has greatly improved communication between parents and students. Austin uses Messenger with Voice to relay weather related closings, special school events, important notices, sports announcements, meeting alerts and more.
Messenger with Voice delivers regular, content-rich communications via email, phone or text messaging. Districts use system data to immediately distribute a large volume of calls including emergency notifications powered by ShoutPoint voice-over internet protocal (VOIP) service.
Positive Reaction
Administrators have embraced Infinite Campus. “Without a comprehensive SIS like Infinite Campus, an administrator’s job would be more difficult,” said Haugen. “Tasks like scheduling, behavior referrals, and academic and graduation tracking have been simplified. I would highly recommend Infinite Campus to any district out there. The core product has so much to offer and Campus staff work very tediously to meet the needs of educational practitioners.