Washoe County, Nevada
63,000 Students
Washoe County School District (WCSD) in Washoe County, Nevada, adopted Campus Online Registration and saved $125,000 in printing expenses in its first year alone. Instead of sending every student home with a thick and costly information packet for their parents to fill out each year, they now direct parents to the Campus Portal to enter and update their family’s personal information. No more packets, no more printing, just savings for the district and a more convenient system for families.
Challenges
WCSD serves about 63,000 students enrolled in 93 schools. Washoe schools are like yours. They need to know their students’ demographic information for decision making and state reporting purposes. They keep their contact information on file in case of emergencies. They gather information from parents to inform a wide variety of daily operations. In short, they need input from families to help them run the district from day to day.
Like many districts, they‘ve traditionally gathered this information by sending home paper packets on an annual basis. It required a lot of printing, logistics and data entry. Packets got lost or left on the bus and much follow up was needed. Busy parents often signed off on their contents without giving more than a brief glance at the paperwork inside. It was, in other words, a normal district with an area in need of improvement.
Solution
WCSD worked with Campus Development to make sure the tools delivered were what they needed.
Online Registration is a premium product available to all Campus customers.
Campus Online Registration can:
- Enable parents to update and/or enter demographic, health provider, allergy, health conditions, emergency contact and student relationships.
- Link to custom forms.
- Print or save registration package and confirmation receipts.
- Send emails informing parents of registration status changes.
Because it is integrated with the core application, Online Registration presents pre-populated screens to parents using Campus Census information. It also eliminates duplicate data entry by staff. It maintains the integrity of submitted household data through Campus Census verification by district staff prior to it being approved for use.
“We’re finding parents are looking at their data more closely than they used to with the paperwork they received,” reported Mary Martini, WCSD Applications Analyst. “They have to verify every piece of information and so they’re doing things like updating their emergency contact information more frequently and accurately.”
The Campus Portal provides a familiar user environment and is a one-stop-shop for the whole family. “Parents like that they only have to enter the data once,” said Martini. “If you have five children in the district you only have to approve a form once.
“We have volunteer applications, emergency contact sheets and about 10 other forms that parents fill out with Online Registration,” continued Martini. “You should have seen our packets before. They were thick. We save about $125,000 a year just on packet printing with Online Registration.”
The greater Washoe community has come together to support the Online Registration process. In addition to accessing Infinite Campus from kiosks inside school buildings, parents can log into Online Registration at local libraries and, in many cases, even in the workplace. The district has provided the staffs of public libraries with instruction sheets for helping parents. The same sheets have also been placed in the Internet-enabled break rooms at some of the local casinos where parents work. By partnering with the local community, WCSD has paved the way for continuing success.
Results
Online Registration has eliminated costly registration material packets and weeks of processing time for new and returning student registration.
“When you compare it to what we were paying per student for printing costs, we have saved a lot of money,” explained Martini. “Parents sit down once a year for 5 to 10 minutes and they’re done. It’s that simple.”