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Is Your District Mental Health Ready?

Mental health is a critical component of student success. When students are mentally healthy, they are more likely to be engaged in learning, have better attendance, and achieve better academic outcomes. However, supporting student mental health is not only the responsibility of parents and mental health professionals; schools and districts also play a vital role in promoting student well-being. In this blog post, we’ll discuss best practices for promoting mental health in schools and provide a quiz to help you assess your district’s readiness to support student mental health.

1. Develop a Comprehensive Mental Health Policy

One of the best ways to support student mental health is to develop a comprehensive mental health policy that is regularly reviewed and updated. This policy should outline the district’s commitment to promoting student mental health, as well as provide guidelines for identifying and addressing mental health concerns in students. The policy should also include strategies for providing mental health training to staff and faculty and outline partnerships with community mental health organizations.

2. Provide Mental Health Training to Staff and Faculty

Providing mental health training to staff and faculty is critical to supporting student mental health. Teachers and staff should be trained to recognize the signs and symptoms of mental health concerns and provided with strategies for responding to student mental health concerns. The training should also provide strategies for promoting positive mental health in the classroom, such as mindfulness exercises and stress management strategies.

3. Hire a Designated Mental Health Professional

Having a designated mental health professional on staff is an essential component of a comprehensive mental health program. This professional can provide direct services to students, such as counseling and therapy, and can also provide consultation to staff and faculty. This professional should be trained to recognize the signs and symptoms of mental health concerns and should be able to provide referrals to community mental health organizations when necessary.

4. Implement a Process for Identifying and Supporting Students with Mental Health Concerns

Having a formal process for identifying and supporting students with mental health concerns is essential. This process should outline clear guidelines and procedures for identifying students with mental health concerns, as well as strategies for providing support and referrals. The process should also ensure that student privacy is protected and that students are not stigmatized or discriminated against because of their mental health concerns.

5. Develop Partnerships with Community Mental Health Organizations

Developing partnerships with community mental health organizations can provide additional support to students and families. These organizations can provide counseling, therapy, and other mental health services that may not be available within the school district. They can also provide training and consultation to staff and faculty.

6. Implement a Suicide Prevention Plan

Suicide is a leading cause of death among young people, and schools and districts have a responsibility to prevent suicide. Implementing a suicide prevention plan can help identify students who may be at risk and provide them with support and referrals. The plan should include clear protocols and procedures for responding to suicide threats or attempts, as well as strategies for promoting positive mental health in the school community.

7. Provide Mental Health Resources and Support to Families

Families play a critical role in supporting student mental health, and schools and districts can provide resources and support to families. This support can include workshops, seminars, and resources on promoting positive mental health in the home. It can also include referrals to community mental health organizations and counseling services.

8. Provide Mental Health Resources and Support Outside of School Hours

Supporting student mental health should not be limited to the school day. Schools and districts can provide resources and support outside of school hours, such as mental health hotlines and crisis support services. This support can help students and families access the services they need when they need them.

Supporting student mental health is a critical component of promoting student success.
Assess if your district is Mental Health Ready:

Quiz – Is Your District Mental Health Ready?
 


Scoring:

Interpreting Your Score:

12 – 16 points: Congratulations, your district is highly prepared to support mental health!

8 – 11 points: Your district is making progress, but there is still room for improvement.

0 – 8 points: Your district appears to have gaps in its mental health supports and resources. Consider immediate actions to establish mental health policies, resources, and support for students.

Elise Ozarowski

Elise is a writer and member of the award-winning content team at Frontline Education. A former member of Frontline’s events team, she is passionate about making connections, whether that be in person at events, online via social media or directly in her writing.

Talk Data to Me: Professional Development Activity Trends

By analyzing professional development program data, school districts can identify specific trends and patterns in teacher performance and growth. This enables district leaders to adapt their programs and strategies to meet emerging challenges and leverage opportunities for growth. Ultimately, continuous improvement based on data analysis ensures that your professional development program remains relevant and aligned with the evolving needs of both teachers and students.
 
In this installment of Talk Data to Me, we’ll be analyzing trends in professional development activities, using data from the Frontline Research and Learning Institute and Frontline’s Professional Growth solution.
 

 

Professional Development Activities Completed

Over the past few years, COVID threw a lot on teachers’ plates and necessitated rapid and substantial changes in professional development. With the closure of schools and the need for social distancing, in-person workshops and conferences were largely replaced by online platforms. Teachers had to adapt to virtual environments and software, like Google Classroom and Zoom, and completely rewrite curricula for online delivery. Essentially, they had to use different pedagogies to maximize the efficacy of online learning.
 
These new skill needs are reflected in national data trends. The following chart shows the number of professional development activities per instructional user being completed each month.
 

The key takeaways

  • There are spikes all throughout 2020 and the number of activities being completed per user in typical years is about two per month.
  • In a handful of months after COVID, the average user was completing 3 to 4 activities per month.
  • The trend in the number of activities being completed evened out in 2021, 2022, and so far in 2023.

 

Professional Development Hours Completed

While the pandemic has presented numerous challenges, it has also sparked innovation and transformation in the realm of professional development for teachers. The integration of technology, increased accessibility, and emphasis on remote teaching skills have created new opportunities for teachers to grow and adapt to the changing educational landscape.
 
To fully leverage these new opportunities, districts should consider shifting to an ongoing, individualized professional development program as opposed to frontloading professional development early in the year. Consistent PD tends to be timelier and more relevant to what teachers may be facing in that moment and may also make teachers feel like they are continually learning and growing. Another benefit of making the switch to ongoing PD is increased retention, maximized classroom abilities, and minimized hiring needs.
 
Let’s take a look at the average number of hours of activities completed per user over time.
 

 

The key takeaways

  • The trends in the hours of activities being completed didn’t change all that much even during COVID. However, users were opting for quicker learning opportunities. Why? Educators were probably trying to learn a little bit about a lot of different topics as quickly as possible.

 

Analyzing Professional Development in Your District

The data listed above is a nationally representative data set of over 800 districts. However, your district may differ and the only way to know for sure is to analyze your own professional development data. The good news? Human Capital Analytics software can help make the process a lot simpler.
 
Here’s a quick example of the personalized views you can access with this type of system:
 

 
Your district’s unique professional development data is on full display. It is interactive and filterable for a variety of data points including professional development formats programs, time of year length of activity credits awarded for activity completion, even expense information associated with individual activities and users.
 
Dive into data to maximize the efficacy of your district’s professional development with Human Capital Analytics
 

 
Recommended Resources
 
Fostering a Culture of Growth: Council Rock School District: How one school district fosters a collaborative and innovative culture of growth to boost retention rates.
 
5 Tips for Looking Ahead to Next Year’s PD: Summer is the perfect time to reflect on what went well (and what didn’t) with your professional development program over the last school year. Get 5 tips for evaluating your PD to empower your team’s growth.
 
Effective Professional Learning Strategies (That Actually Work): Professional development requires more than one-stop workshops, classroom observations, or offering feedback forms. It must be intentional. The recipe for true growth begins with an individualized learning process — one that gives educators a voice and choice, identifies strengths and areas for improvement, and promotes a collaborative learning culture.
 

Maximize Medicaid Revenue by Maximizing Your Summer: What K-12 Medicaid Coordinators Can Do to Optimize Services

The summer presents an excellent opportunity to streamline processes, enhance service delivery, and ensure a successful start to the upcoming school year. While the school may be less active during this period, that doesn’t mean the work slows down for anyone working on Medicaid. This blog post will guide you through several proactive steps you can take over the summer to positively impact Medicaid coordination.

1. Update and Organize Student Records

Summer break allows you the time to thoroughly review and update student records. Ensure that all necessary consent forms, eligibility documentation, and medical records are up to date and accurately filed. This preparation sets a solid foundation for Medicaid billing and claiming processes in the upcoming year.

Hand-picked content for you:

Navigating Parental Consent for Medicaid

Read Now

2. Collaborate with Stakeholders

Reach out to teachers, therapists, nurses, and other stakeholders involved in Medicaid services. Schedule meetings or informal discussions to evaluate the previous year’s challenges and successes. Gather feedback and insights to identify areas that require improvement and opportunities for collaboration in the future.

3. Enhance Training and Professional Development

Consider providing training sessions to staff members, focusing on areas such as proper documentation practices, billing procedures, and compliance with Medicaid guidelines.

4. Evaluate Service Providers

Review and evaluate the performance of service providers who work with your school. Assess their adherence to Medicaid billing guidelines, quality of documentation, and overall effectiveness in delivering services.

Use this evaluation to not only foster open communication and provide feedback, but also to identify areas for improvement in your processes. With an increased demand on providers, offering an easy-to-use system can make your district a more attractive place to work.

Case Study Read the full story

A Better System for Medicaid and Service Management
Hampton City Schools switched systems they use to document services and bill for Medicaid reimbursement — then switched back again.

5. Streamline Documentation Processes

Summer break is an ideal time to revamp your documentation processes. Review existing templates, progress note formats, and other documentation tools. Simplify and standardize these processes to ensure consistent and accurate recording of Medicaid billable activities. Develop clear guidelines for staff members regarding what information needs to be documented and how it should be recorded.

6. Strengthen Partnerships

Build and strengthen partnerships with external agencies, community organizations, and healthcare providers. Collaborate with them to enhance coordination of services and explore potential funding opportunities beyond Medicaid. Establishing strong relationships during the summer break can pave the way for expanded support and resources during the school year.

7. Plan for Staffing and Scheduling

Evaluate the staffing needs for the upcoming year, considering any changes in student enrollment or services. Work closely with administrators and human resources to ensure appropriate staffing levels for Medicaid services. Develop a comprehensive schedule for service providers, aligning it with student needs, and maximizing Medicaid billable hours.

Having a software system like Frontline Medicaid & Service Management can help make your planning process significantly easier, giving you a single source of truth on service and staffing needs.

8. Update Medicaid Policies and Procedures

Review your school’s Medicaid policies and procedures manual, ensuring it reflects the most recent guidelines and regulations. Update any outdated information and communicate the changes to staff members. Provide training or refresher sessions on the updated policies to ensure compliance and consistency.

9. Plan for Outreach and Enrollment

Prepare for the upcoming year’s Medicaid outreach and enrollment efforts. Develop strategies to educate parents and guardians about the importance of Medicaid services, eligibility requirements, and the enrollment process. Collaborate with school administrators, counselors, and community partners to facilitate the enrollment of eligible students.

Frontline Medicaid & Service Management was built to make Medicaid easier and more effective for districts like yours.
See it in action

Elise Ozarowski

Elise is a writer and member of the award-winning content team at Frontline Education. A former member of Frontline’s events team, she is passionate about making connections, whether that be in person at events, online via social media or directly in her writing.

Data & Analytics Buyer’s Guide

Data and analytics are increasingly becoming a critical component of K-12 education. School districts are leveraging data to identify opportunities to improve student outcomes, increase teacher effectiveness, and enhance operational efficiency. However, purchasing data and analytics tools can be a daunting task. With this guide, we aim to simplify the process by outlining the key considerations when evaluating data and analytics tools for your school.
 

1. Data Quality:

When evaluating data and analytics tools, it is essential to ensure the quality of the data they utilize. Consider whether the data is reliable, accurate, and up-to-date. Additionally, consider whether the tools can use the data housed in your existing data systems, such as your student information system (SIS), learning management system (LMS), or assessment tools.
 

Frontline Tip:

As George Fuechsel, the pioneering IBM computer programmer, said, “Garbage in, Garbage out.” Talk to your data and IT teams to assess what tools you currently use. How easily you can pull data from them, and how well-maintained are they? Systems that have fallen out of use or are not well maintained will likely have unreliable data to extract. It’s also good practice to audit your internal policies for managing these applications to ensure the data entered by staff is consistent with best practices.
 

 
Consider the data that your community can access. State-level data will not always match what you see in your SIS and financial systems. The data reported publicly by your state’s Department of Education may influence how news outlets report on your district. Comparisons are most often made to neighboring communities or districts similar in demographics. You should be aware of the questions that stakeholders may ask and prepare to answer them using data that can be verified. Does your state report combine charter school enrollment and your district’s traditional public school enrollment? Will this impact how the public views specific metrics? When looking at the trend in your fund balance amounts, do stakeholders understand how much your district spends each year and what the percentage of fund balance means for a district of your size?
 

 

 

2. User-Friendliness:

The data and analytics tools you select must be easy to use and accessible to key stakeholders based on what data they need. Ensure your chosen system has an intuitive interface, easy navigation, and training and support resources to help users leverage the tools effectively.
 

Frontline Tip:

Identify who in your district will be using these analytics. How experienced are they with using data for decision-making? What level of training and support will your stakeholders need?
Use this information to assess the tools you are evaluating and the process to implement them for your teams. What type of support services does the company provide? Will you have access to advisors to help navigate and train user adoption? Is there a learning center, learning materials, or videos provided by the vendor?
 

 

3.Security:

Student data privacy is a significant concern in the education sector. When evaluating data and analytics tools, ensure they comply with relevant data privacy regulations, such as FERPA. Consider the security measures to protect data, including user authentication, data encryption, and audit trails.
 

Frontline Tip:

Identify who in your district will be using these analytics. What sort of data access should they have? How does that impact what user management requirements are needed? Does the application allow role-based access controls (managing access by roles/groups)? Can you filter student data by users so only staff that should see student records can see those records? How is data loaded into the application, and is it encrypted in transit and at rest (which is a security best practice for protecting data)? How are user accounts created and managed?
 

 

4.Scalability:

Ensure that the data and analytics tools you select can scale to meet the needs of your district. Consider the number of users, the data volume, and the data update frequency. Additionally, ensure that the tools have the flexibility to grow with your district’s changing needs and evolving technology landscape.
 

Frontline Tip:

Review vendors’ licensing and user policies to ensure they will meet your current and future needs. How are user accounts added and managed? Managing user accounts and access can be a full-time job, so make sure that the applications you review have a process for quickly seeing and managing those accounts.
 

 
You will also want to review the implementation process documents. Check to see how the data is loaded, if there are any file size limitations, how frequently users can refresh data, and whether automation is available for data loading. It’s also good to ask vendors how prepared they are to scale their applications and whether they can share performance benchmarks such as software uptime.
 

5. Data Visualization:

Data visualization tools are essential for communicating insights to stakeholders. Ensure that the data and analytics tools you select have robust visualization capabilities, including creating dashboards, reports, and charts. Consider whether the tools provide real-time data visualization and can drill down into the data for further analysis.
 

Frontline Tip:

Each district will have two groups of analytics users – your consumers and your builders. Any analytics tool should provide features that support both of these groups.
The consumers of analytics need practical, simple-to-understand visuals that are meaningful and descriptive. When assessing the applications for your consumer, try not to get lured by complex, technical visualizations. These often don’t communicate as effectively as straightforward charts or tables. While simple bar charts and line charts might seem boring, they are often the best option if you want to communicate information through visuals.
 
Your builders will need to be able to analyze the data quickly, build their own data views, and construct dashboards for the consumers. When assessing the applications for your builders, review the process, start-to-finish, for building analytics and dashboards. Is the team responsible for building analytics able to learn the application with minimal training or support quickly?
 

 
When evaluating data and analytics tools for your school, these essential factors will help ensure you select the right tool for your district’s needs. The right tools can provide insights that improve student outcomes, increase teacher effectiveness, and enhance operational efficiency. With the correct data and analytics tools, your district can gain a competitive edge and better support student success.
 
Download the Software Buying Guide Checklist Here
 

Relevant Case Studies:

How Lake Zurich Community Unit School District 95 Quickly and Easily Shares Financial Data with the Community Read Now
 
How Lake Zurich Community Unit School District 95 Quickly and Easily Shares Financial Data with the Community Watch Now
 
How San Dieguito Union High School District pulls multiple data sources together to inform programming decisions and adjust individual student support Read Now

 

5 Ways Districts Can Better Handle Student Health Records

In the shadowy corners of the internet, medical records are readily available for purchase. On the dark web and black market, patient records can sell for $1,000 apiece. These records are sold to buyers in many industries: data brokers like IQVIA (formerly known as IMS Health), pharmaceutical firms and even tech companies. Children’s health data is just as valuable, and no one can doubt that medical records, especially those for our children, should be rigorously protected.

And yet, relatively few school districts have a mature cybersecurity plan and the appropriate resources to keep sensitive information secure. As a result, schools may be an easy target for hackers seeking valuable data to sell on the dark web.

So how can you ensure that your district is a better steward of student health records?

1. Implement an electronic health record system.

Implementing an electronic health record (EHR) system is an essential best practice for school districts to keep student health records secure and organized. Electronic health records allow districts to maintain accurate, up-to-date student health information, while also ensuring privacy and compliance with state and federal regulations. An EHR system makes it easier for school nurses and other health professionals to access student health records from any device with internet access, so they can provide quality care and treatment to students when they need it most. In addition, an EHR system can also help to reduce errors in documentation and promote continuity of care for students. By using an EHR system, school districts can improve the quality of care provided to their students and ensure the safety and privacy of their health information.

You may enjoy this hand-picked content:

A Buyer’s Guide to K-12 Electronic Health Records Systems

2. Ensure that school health providers are trained on privacy regulations and how to handle student health information.

Ensuring that school health providers are trained on privacy regulations and how to handle student health information is a crucial best practice in keeping student health data safe. Health information is sensitive and private, and it is vital to ensure that school staff members understand how to collect, store, and handle this information appropriately. Providing training for school health providers on privacy regulations and best practices for handling student health data can help prevent data breaches and ensure that student health information is kept confidential. It can also help to build trust between families and school health providers, creating a positive and supportive learning environment. By prioritizing the training of school health providers on privacy regulations and best practices for handling student health data, school districts can ensure that student health data remains safe and secure while also promoting quality care and trust in their school community.

3. Adopt consistent policies regarding the privacy of student data.

The first step is to work closely with your legal counsel to clarify your district’s responsibilities when it comes to student data and privacy. It’s important to know exactly what is required of your organization under laws such as FERPA. Your state may have its own student records laws and regulations, so be sure that you fully understand those as well.
Then, adopt consistent policies regarding the privacy of student data. Again, this is something you should work on with your legal counsel’s assistance and review. Once this is done, don’t forget to review your district’s relationships with all vendors in light of conformity with these policies.

This brings us to our next step, partnering with vendors who are committed to protecting student data.

4. Ensure that vendors are equally committed to protecting student data.

You could have the most rock-solid cybersecurity policies and practices within your district, but what about the vendors managing your data? It’s crucial to that you only work with vendors who can demonstrate practices and policies to protect student data and reduce the risk of compromise. Selecting a school health records vendor is more than simply choosing good software; you are selecting a long-term relationship with a partner and its tools to efficiently deliver and enhance the critical healthcare services your students need. Your vendor needs to be transparent and trustworthy, understand your workflow, provide the level of service you’ll need throughout the relationship and, just as importantly, be around for a long time.

You may enjoy this hand-picked content:

Top 5 FERPA & HIPAA Misconceptions for Schools

There are two things to consider when working with vendors. The first is making sure that vendor contracts and agreements do not allow the harvesting and sale of student medical records, even in a de-identified or aggregate form. Some electronic health records management system vendors sell patient data to third parties, so make sure your vendor is not one of them!

This is most prevalent with free software. With budgets shrinking, school districts are understandably looking for ways to comply with the vast array of state health data reporting requirements and obtain the efficiencies of electronic health records (EHR) without adding significant costs. However, the ethics, legal liability and privacy implications of free software must be approached as an extremely serious responsibility of school health care providers as well as the school district’s administrative and legal personnel.

Remember, if you are not paying for the product, you (or your students) could BE the product. Private vendors should not make money by selling student health data obtained from school health records. Make sure that any contracts your organization enters into specifically forbid the vendor from selling student data. If your district is still contemplating “free” EHR software, then at the very minimum make sure to require the vendor to provide a comprehensive list of all companies to whom the vendor has sold or is marketing the aggregated and de-identified data.

Second, make sure your vendor has taken steps to ensure the security of their software. Look for a system that is FERPA compliant. Even if your district is not a covered entity, greater attention to compliance and security is never a bad thing, especially when it comes to protecting student privacy. In addition, you want a vendor who has taken steps to protect its systems from cyber attacks. Ask your vendor if their product is SOC 2-compliant, and how they ensure their data centers are secure

5. Work with parents and educators to promote informed consent about how student data is managed.

Regardless of how your district chooses to manage student health records, full transparency is a must. If using EHR software, your district has an ethical obligation to make sure that the parents of its students fully understand the privacy implications if the vendor sells their records to third parties. You need to be able to explain to parents in ordinary language the privacy implications of what data is collected and how it may be used.

As the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology remarked, “Notice and consent is the practice of requiring individuals to give positive consent to the personal data collection practices of each individual app, program, or web service. Only in some fantasy world do users actually read these notices and understand their implications before clicking to indicate their consent.” A long, drawn-out “Terms of Service” agreement with a checkbox isn’t enough to ensure that parents actually are informed about how their children’s data will be managed, and to truly understand the effects that the sale of student data might have on their children in the future.

So, have a strategy for supporting parent education and involvement in the EHR process. For example, you may wish to hold a limited number of town hall meetings or create other educational tools to reach parents who would otherwise not read the Terms of Use or the Privacy Policy.

With student information at risk, it’s more important than ever that parents, educators, school districts and national organizations work together to protect student privacy and ensure students’ futures are not impacted by data breaches or the sale of sensitive records.

[1] Yannis Bakos, et al., Does Anyone Read the Fine Print? Consumer Attention to Standard Form Contracts, Law & Economics Research Paper Series Working Paper No. 09-40, NYU Center for Law, Economics and Organization (March 2013).

Your Analytics Questions, Answered

Questions about data and analytics in schools? You’ve come to the right place.

Successful analytics isn’t about collecting the data, running a few equations, and discovering instant insight. It’s about asking the right questions and using the right tools to find valuable answers. By employing data-driven strategies, districts can engage in more effective financial planning, make informed program decisions, and better understand student performance.

It may seem daunting, but we’re here to help. Below are specific questions about using analytics in your schools and districts to drive critical conversations.

Question #1:
How can you evaluate district programs using comparative analytics?

Program evaluation can be a wide and varied topic. Analytics is one tool you can use to evaluate programs that are important to you and your district.  

We will focus on comparative analytics using a three-part process to evaluate your programs.

Step 1: Identify – Identify the programs you want to compare to your peers.


The first step in this process is to identify which programs you want to compare and make an internal comparison to see which programs are leading to strong outcomes and which ones might not be. You might want to identify the programs that align with your district’s strategic plan or that your community regularly asks you questions about. Are there different groups of students that can be identified as underperforming compared to other programs or as your baseline of student performance in the district?
 

 

Step 2: Peer Groups – Think about what peer groups you want to consider.


The next step is identifying your peer groups and thinking about who you want to be in your peer groups. Do you want to use a local peer group for comparison or a statewide peer group? A best practice is to set both up as they may have different applications for different comparisons.
 

 
It is best practice to have both a local peer group and a state peer group. You also want to set up a statewide peer group. An advantage of a peer group within your entire state is that you can compare to districts that are similar in size and student makeup. As you identify districts that are performing well with students, that may identify an area of possible improvement within your district, which you can look to action by phoning a friend and finding out what programs are working well in their district.

Step 3: Measure & Report – How do you use your results to strengthen your programs?


The last step is to take action on what you find from your analysis. What does this look like in practice? This comparative visual is a student spending compared with state student performance results.
 

 
You have the operating expense per pupil on the Y-axis. On the X axis, you have the student’s performance on a state standardized test. Each dot represents a district and its performance on the same state assessment.

The top left will show that districts are spending more with lower student performance. On the bottom left, we’ll show districts spending less with lower student performance. On the top right, you have higher spending and higher student performance; on the bottom right, you have lower expenditure and higher student performance.

You can begin to take action on these findings by asking questions such as, are they spending less than you yet getting higher performance? Where do you want your district to be in this chart? If you set a good peer group, the makeup of students should be similar to yours. You can use this as an opportunity to contact your peers, see what you can learn from them and how they are running programs, and see if it’s something you can replicate or adopt in your district.  

Reflection:

  • You can use comparative analytics in any number of ways.
  • You can use internal analytics to compare the effectiveness of different program areas against base student groups.
  • You can use peer group comparisons to find the best practices of your local and statewide peers, and you can use different peer groups to drive decisions in your district.

 

Question #2:
How Do We Track Program Spending Throughout the Year and Compare It to Our Budget?


When utilizing budget analytics, we recommend the same three-part process to evaluate your budget:

Step 1: Identify – Identify the programs you want to track spending on and identify those with elements of your account code string:


When you consider identifying those programs you may want to track, think about the programs you are often asked about. This is an example of some of the most popular programs you may be asked to track within your district.
 

 
You can report budget variances for programs such as special education, compensatory education, Bilingual education, and Career and Technical Education. This report highlights those programs with the largest spending levels. You can also see how you’re spending in the current year versus the prior year using simple charts and graphs.

Step 2: Examine – Track those programs with identified budget codes.


Next, you’ll want to track those programs monthly to avoid surprises at the year’s end. You want to go through and see what you expect to be spending, and then you can compare those against your actual expenditures. Those variances you identify throughout the year can be reported to your board. Additionally, if you expect to overspend a program, you’ll want to specify that. Likewise, if you’re coming underneath or favorable with a program budget, you can also identify that with your board and community.
 

 

Step 3 – Measure & Report: Measure and report on those programs’ spending.


The final step is meeting compliance requirements and reporting those results to key stakeholders. In this analysis, we identified some programs that are required by the state to be spent at a certain level. Here we’re using a simple red-green stoplight analysis to see if you meet those spending requirements.
 

 
Questions to consider:

  • Do you have enough budgeted for those programs?
  • Have we already spent sufficient year-to-date to meet that spending requirement?
  • If yes, do you know you’ve completed your spending compliance requirement?
  • If not, ensure you will spend that by the end of your school year.
  • This report also looks at a projection. Are you projected to spin that?
  • Do you have the spending plans in place to be successful and meet that spending requirement or to meet that board goal that they’ve set for spending on a particular program?

Reflection Questions:

  • Do you have programs that your community asked about and that you can report on?
  • Are you regularly communicating with your community about essential or strategic programs?

Question #3:
Where to Start with Student Performance and Program Evaluation?

Combining budget planning and comparisons is tricky during a program evaluation. How does the program impact students? How does it inform the strategic plan? Today, we want to help you get a little further along in how a program impacts students and, specifically, to look at key performance indicators that we might use to measure and evaluate student performance.

Step 1: Identify – Measure student enrollment in a specific program and assess student performance in and out of the program.

First, let’s identify student enrollment in a specific program and determine how those students perform in the program and their other academic areas.
 

 
When we look at this first visual, it’s our overall district enrollment. From early elementary through 12th grade, we can see how many students are served by grade level. Based on this visual, you’ll see that our largest enrollment is in the ninth grade.  

If we were to take this same visual and create additional filters to see how many students receive career and technical education services, we would be able to see the same visual but filtered down for CTE.
 

 
Now, we can see seventh through 12th grade. You’ll notice here that our ninth-grade enrollment is the largest. Therefore, career and technical education enrollment is tracking with the district. This is an excellent visual to see how your percentages are measuring up and how well your program is tracking. This shows equitable access for all students to this program.

Step 2: Examine – Take a critical look at students receiving additional services within a program and determine gaps and gains.

If we wanted to evaluate how those students are also performing, we could segregate students currently in career and technical education and assess their performance across all their courses. For instance, the visual below shows all students in career and technical education and their grades earned in each course they are currently enrolled in. We can see advanced placement, dual credit, and honors courses and the breakdown of Fs, Cs, Bs, and As rates for these students within those particular courses.
    

For instance, over 50% of students who are in CTE are earning As in their AP courses. This is a great visual to be able to monitor how well students who are in these programs are performing as compared to students outside of the program.

Step 3: Measure & Report – Based on the findings, what are possible next steps for investing in students within this program?

Next, we’ll take a moment to critically examine the students who receive additional services within the program and where gaps and gains might occur. Based on the findings you’re seeing within your program evaluations, what might be the next step for investing in the students within these programs to see more success?

If you want to look specifically at the program, we’ll need a metric matching the program. For instance, for career and technical education, frequently career readiness is measured through industry certifications. Here we can see ninth through 12th-grade students who have earned industry certifications.
 
 
 
This means that the student has completed coursework and earned the opportunity to take a certification exam and earned that credential. Here we see that the 12th-grade certification earning is at the highest level as the students go through the program. This indicates that students progress through a program and stay within the selected through their 12th-grade year.

When students earn their industry credentials, it’s valuable to evaluate who those students are. Students in Career and Technical Education programs may receive additional services.
 

 
This visual measures the same set of students shown on the previous chart. It provides additional visibility into students who receive language services, students who experience poverty, and students who receive special education services. You can also look at male and female performance in industry certification exams. Whatever you choose to measure as a community can be tracked and measured using the data in student analytics. You can answer those strategic questions your district cares about most.

Then we can ask the bigger question. Based on that, what are our possible next steps in investing in students within this program? What collective strategic plans must be in place for continuous improvement as a community?

We hope the responses to these three questions underscore the paramount role of analytics in enhancing the functioning of school districts. Using a strategic, three-step process that leverages analytics for program evaluation, budget tracking, and student performance assessment can help districts answer critical questions for their community. Analytics can be a powerful educational tool, supporting continuous improvement and providing valuable insights to address the most crucial strategic questions.
 

5 Best Practices for Managing the Entire Employee Experience

Education professionals come to work to make a difference – technology should support them in that mission, not get in the way.
 
Mitchell Welch, Principal Solutions Consultant at Frontline Education, and Sundie Dahlkamp, Executive Director of Human Resources at Pearland ISD, recently sat down to discuss how school districts can leverage technology to create an outstanding employee experience for their staff.
 
From proactively engaging with job seekers to managing employee-related forms across your district, these two K-12 experts took a deep dive on how technology can help to optimize school district’s branding, recruitment, position management, and more.
 
Here’s a breakdown of their conversation, and a couple of resources to help you get started.
 

The most common challenges in K-12 Human Resources:

When you work in Human Resources, it’s up to you to recruit, retain, and grow talented staff to create an outstanding educational experience for students. But it’s challenging to focus on your people when you’re shuffling paperwork or sending out thick onboarding packets and waiting for signatures. It tends to feel like there just isn’t enough time in the day.
 
Transactional HR and inefficient processes can make it tough to maintain compliance, get insight into up-to-date data, or even focus on standing out to potential candidates. If your district is still relying on manual systems to get work done, the challenges Mitchell addressed likely feel familiar:

  • The need to minimize paper to reduce siloed experiences.
  • Inconsistent employee experience impacts work culture.
  • Inconsistent processes to capture employee information and store it in one location.
  • Lack of reporting on trends and issues impairs the ability to understand and take action at the district leadership level.

“This is my 16th year in HR. When I got to my district, we were big fans of paper. We had an electronic application, but it was static. You would apply and what would we do? Print it out.”

Sundie

 
Fortunately, there’s a way to overcome these challenges. Automating your manual processes with a human capital management system can empower your team to move past transactional HR and take on a more proactive role to building a stronger school system.
 

Best practices for managing the employee experience:

1. Have a strong foundation

Before diving into best practices, it’s important to lay the foundation. Despite what systems or tools you put in place, keep these three facets in mind. According to Mitchell and Sundie, these are the three critical components of a sustainable process for managing the employee experience:

  • Oversight: Maintaining accountability for programs and resources
  • Insight: Providing efficient processes on a day-to-day basis to helping good people do things better every day
  • Foresight: Looking ahead with data to predict trends in order to increase efficiency, productivity, and performance

 

“If you have data and aren’t sharing it, you don’t have foresight. Your data is only as good as the recipient. If we aren’t giving it to the people who need it, there’s no way to have foresight into what you should be doing next. It’s just a static roster otherwise.”

Sundie

 

“Can we give data and have data reports running before a problem occurs? Or are we running these reports to find out why a problem occurred? If you’re running a report after the fact, when you look at your data it’s no longer valid because it’s outdated.”

Mitchell

 

2. Implement a position management plan

Position management is a district-wide process where positions are categorized into departments with an organizational structure that maps out everything from buildings to leadership and the relative staff needed to be successful across the district. It’s the ongoing management and optimization of positions. Implementing this plan can not only help you move beyond an organization chart and into more comprehensive mapping, but it can also help identify critical information designated at the position level.
 

“If I’m managing the position, I’m keeping up with the movement inside my organization. The true day to day. Is it a basketball coach? Is it a first-grade teacher? Do they work four hours a day or six?”

Sundie

 

“Do you have visibility into how many vacancies do you have? Do you have visibility of the date of that vacancy? With one-click¬ can you see pending approval vacancies, certain location, partially filled? Position management is the movement of the position.”

Mitchell

 

Q: What did it look like in your district before you implemented a position management plan?

“To move an employee, to resign an employee, we literally had a piece of paper that would come to our office to get all of the signatures needed. 10 days was the average time for this process. If a bus driver went from part time to full time, our transportation secretary would type up an email and send it to a billion people. And that’s how we would find out.” – Sundie
 

Q: What did it look like in your district after?

“Now, I can transfer someone, reassign them, or change their hours all in a system. Is my bus driver now a master bus driver? Is my basketball coach now a head coach? These are things I can do behind the scenes when managing a position. This way we can notify anyone in the district of this change (who needs to know) instantly.” – Sundie
 

Handpicked content:

[eBook] Position Management Playbook for School Districts
Read Now

 

3. Make the most of your job descriptions

Do your current job descriptions help you stand out amidst stiff competition? Enhancing your job postings will send you on your way to attracting even more qualified candidates and ultimately hire talent that aligns with your district’s mission, vision, and values.
Make sure your job postings are:

  • Clear and engaging
  • User-friendly
  • Emphasize professional development opportunities
  • Showcase your culture and community
  • Incorporate multimedia
  • List key requirements and preferred qualifications

 

“Are you using job descriptions to their fullest capability? Are you promoting your brand anywhere you can in your system? You should include a logo, diversity statement, mission statement, and a video talking about the job as a part of the job descriptions. Put a talking face that tells you who are so you can change how applicants think about you. Promote your culture where you can!”

Mitch

 

Handpicked content:

3 Characteristics (and Examples) of Great Teacher Job Descriptions
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4. Streamline your job requisitions

Job requisitions are an important element of recruiting as they ensure the process is structured, consistent, and aligned with the district’s needs and requirements. Because job requisitions can require the review and authorization of multiple stakeholders, not to mention the level of detail needed, a streamlined, simple process is of the upmost importance. Sticking to manual processes and paper spreadsheets can create too many unnecessary hurdles.

Manual job requisitions process:

  • Time-consuming
  • Error-prone
  • Lack of standardization
  • Limited visibility and tracking
  • Communication challenges
  • Difficulty in data analysis
  • Limited collaboration
  • Lack of scalability

 

Streamlined job requistions:

“We wanted to know the reason for the vacancy. With our system, I can go into my reports and give it a date segment and run nothing but vacancy reasons and tell my superintendent exactly why people are leaving. Building these out are so helpful because it allows principal to say exactly what they want in a requisition. We can then go in and customize the report to sort exactly what they need.”

Sundie

 

“Let’s bring it back to our foundation with job requisitions. Think about how this process relates to oversight, insight, and foresight. With oversight, you’re maintaining policies and collecting data in order to see if you’re compliant. You’ve got insight because you’re giving hiring people the data they need to post the right job and the right description with no mistakes. And with foresight, you can run vacancy reasons to proactively see trends of why people are leaving. Creating job requisitions should help you make better decisions based on data and help you hire that much better.”

Mitch

 

“We actually have 2 pipelines in regard to job requisitions. Hired or volunteer. When it goes out to our postings, we don’t want it to be confusing for a parent who wants to go on a field trip. There’s such a need for a simplistic process. Parents don’t want to go to the employment page, so we created a pipeline just for them.’

Sundie

 

Handpicked content:

How to Handle Position Management and Control in Your District
Read Now

 

5. Enhance your recommendation to hire process

Focusing in on and optimizing your rec-to-hire process will contribute to more effective hiring decisions and successful candidate selections.

“This is the big show for us. This process is one of the only processes you do that will impact every stakeholder. HR, applicants, everyone. Ours starts with a supervisor and they tell me a little bit about the person and any other details on a digital form (it’s also important to make sure they have buy-in on the form). Then it immediately comes into the HR department. My rec to hire process responds to the applicant that did get the job and the applicants that didn’t get the job.”

Sundie

 

6 key takeaways for improving the employee experience

Hear it from the experts themselves:

1. You need a “forever process.”

“Are the processes that are in place in your district reliable on a person? If so, they aren’t sustainable. To maximize efficiency and guarantee that efficiency is ongoing…it can’t be reliant on the skillset of one individual on your team. You have to push the envelope. You want it to be a forever process. Not something that just works for today.”

Sundie

 

2. Managing the employee experience is also about your culture.

“It’s critical to make sure the employee experience is well done, and manual processes can make that difficult. Employee experience relates to how them come to us, how they exist with us, and how they leave us. All three have to be aligned because this is your brand.”

Mitchell

 

3. Speed is the name of the game.

“If you’re not offering a job within 1-2 days of the interview, that applicant is gone. That’s the nature of the beast. Speed is of the essence. You need a process that is fast, accurate, and able to reach a lot of people at one time.”

Sundie

 

4. It’s all about oversight, insight, and foresight.

“In HR and human capital management, having oversight means you have position and vacancy visibility. Having insight means you have proactive recruitment, centralized onboarding, and a professional growth journey. Having foresight means you’re managing your people through predictive data and analytics.”

Mitch

 

5. Consider your stakeholders.

“In every process, are you touching every stakeholder? Whether it’s a superintendent, custodial supervisor, principal, a bus driver applicant, a parent…it has to be easy. You have to consider how every process is going to impact that stakeholder.”

Sundie

 

6. Technology and human capital management software is the answer.

“Technology gives you proactive visibility, from resignation to budget changes, all the way to a new neighborhood being built.”

Mitch

 

3 must haves when looking for a sustainable system

Now that you have a list of best practices for managing the employee experience, you might be ready to look into automating and streamlining the process.
 
When looking for a high-quality system to bring into your district, it’s important to ensure that it streamlines recruiting and hiring, onboarding, and training of new employees while also meeting the professional growth needs of a diverse workforce at the same time.
 

These are the three must haves for your new HR System as defined by Mitchell in the discussion:

  • Data entry and reporting has to be easy, accurate, and available on-demand.
  • The system has to manage the employee lifecycle from interview to hiring and onboarding, all the way through retention.
  • The system has to be intuitive and easy to navigate for all stakeholders.

 

Ready to improve the employee experience in your district?
You can learn more here
 

How to Do More with Less in Human Resources

In today’s digital age, a world of information is available at our fingertips. Groceries can be delivered with a click of a button and video reels are bite-sized and easily digestible. It’s all about instant access and connectivity!
 
But take a moment to reflect on the systems you have in place in your district. Do candidates fill out a paper application, or wait to receive a thick onboarding packet through (what feels like) snail mail? If this sounds familiar, you’re likely already aware of the obstacles that come hand in hand with manual and paper processes like these. They’re inefficient, time-consuming, and expensive.
 
So how can districts bring that instant access and connectivity into their schools to really “do more with less” in the digital age? With the right tools and technology in place, district leaders can optimize their operations, reduce manual workloads, and improve efficiency all while working toward creating an outstanding educational experience for students.
 

Doing more with recruiting and hiring.

By automating the most time-consuming aspects of HR processes, Human Resource teams can free up hours in their day and finally focus on their people instead of paperwork.

Here are a few areas in which going digital can help districts do more with less in recruiting and hiring:
 

  • Job postings and applications: If you’re still recruiting with paper-based applications and job postings, chances are you’re missing out on qualified educators. In today’s world, job-seekers are turning to online job boards and first! Automating your recruiting strategies will allow you to proactively advertise your postings and help you deepen your applicant pools by reaching thousands of educators across the country.
  • Applicant tracking: With an applicant tracking system, you can keep track of vacancies, communicate effectively with applicants, and filter through applications to weed out unqualified candidates.
  • Video interviews: It can be hard to find time during the week to schedule an interview, especially if the applicant is looking to move from another district. On-demand interviews are an easy way to improve the candidate experience and help you maximize your schedule.
  • Onboarding: What if you didn’t have to start the onboarding process by sending out a packet of paper? From sending new hire welcome emails to customizing documents, going digital with your onboarding processes will allow your new hires to fill out everything electronically, so they’ll be ready to go even before their first day.

 

District Spotlight: Doing more with less

“It has streamlined our process and minimizes the risk of losing documents. You can allow different administrators, principals, and employees to see different parts of each program and what is specific to their role in the district.”

Suzie Gerhardt, Human Resources Director, Circleville City Schools

 

Getting the full picture of employee attendance.

Managing employee attendance doesn’t have to be stressful. But spending your day calling substitutes on the phone, chasing down paper timesheets, or manually calculating payroll can certainly leave everyone feeling like they’re scrambling.
 
With tools that help you manage your employee absences in one place and make it seamless to find qualified substitutes, you can rest easy knowing the right educators are in place at the right time (and that you’re in compliance).

  • Securing substitutes: Remember Apple’s old commercial that featured the phrase “There’s an app for that”? Well, when it comes to quickly finding substitutes, there really is an app! Make it easier for your substitutes to accept jobs around the clock (even outside school hours).
  • Absence trends: If you can stay on top of absence trends in your district, you can proactivity address opportunities to improve employee experience. For example, if you see Thursday is your “high-absence” day, you can avoid scheduling professional development on a Thursday.
  • Compliance and labor laws: Paper timesheets can lead to errors. Automating all aspects of your time and attendance processes from the collection of time through the application of pay rules, can help you ensure you’re compliant with state and federal labor laws like ACA, FSLA, and FMLA.

 

District Spotlight: Doing more with less

“Automating systems has really improved our culture in the HR office. From being able to process things quicker and cleaner to eliminating some of the time we were using on the old system, it’s been a win-win all the way around.”

Rusty Stecker, Executive Director of Human Resources, Broken Arrow Public Schools

 

Supporting professional learning and collaboration.

Professional development isn’t one-size-fits-all. In order to address every educator’s unique professional growth needs, it’s critical to be able to create individual PD plans and provide an online space for your staff to build a culture of learning.
 
Take back your time while giving your teachers the personalized learning experiences they need and deserve.
 

  • Goal-aligned learning opportunities: What if your teachers could access a digital catalog of goal-aligned learning opportunities that are online, out-of-district, or even conferences? This can ultimately enable your staff to take an active role in their own professional growth.
  • The evaluation process: With a digital employee evaluation system, you can focus on actual feedback instead of forms. You’ll be able to manage every component of the teacher evaluation process, from goal-setting to in-class observations! Simplifying evaluations opens up more room for your educators to engage in discussions about teacher practice.
  • Individualized professional learning: If teachers can get a view of the professional development they’ve completed, they can understand what’s still in progress and what potential courses align to their personal goals.

 
Are you ready to do more with less in your district? Learn More
 

5 Tips to Set Your Asset Management Program Up for Success Next School Year

Throughout the school year, school technology departments work nonstop to ensure that teachers and students have the devices they need for teaching and learning.

But aside from all the work that goes into collecting, cleaning, servicing, and updating those devices over the summer, it’s also the perfect time to pull back and evaluate your asset management strategy as a whole. Just as students can lose momentum over the summer without continued learning, your program can experience the same thing. Luckily, summer gives you the breathing room to fix what’s broken and double down on what works.

1. Update Your Policies and Procedures

Summer offers a strategic opportunity to review your inventory management processes. What tripped you up last year? What made things sing? Start with a small group — your core inventory team — to help brainstorm what’s solid and what needs a good shake-up.

There may be changes to local, state, or federal laws that sneak in and shift your footing. Ask your campuses for feedback about current tasks. Ultimately, your processes should fit cleanly with day-to-day roles and responsibilities. Look for opportunities to increase efficiency. Automate wherever you can to promote job satisfaction and process adoption. Nobody should have to chase serial numbers with a clipboard.

2. Discuss New Initiatives Coming to the District

New district initiatives or purchases with special funding may impact how you manage assets and devices — and may come with additional accountability standards. Translation: more work, more scrutiny.

So ask now, before the back-to-school activity ramps up:

  • How will the devices get to your district?
  • How will you tag the devices?
  • Will you distribute devices directly to students and staff?
  • Will you record the assignment of accessories (case, charging cable, etc.)?
  • Will you require insurance or charge for malicious damage?
  • Will the student be able to transfer campuses with the device?
  • Will you collect the devices at the end of the school year?

You May Enjoy This Case Study:

Faster Help Desk Ticket Resolution Times, Enhanced Asset Tracking and Accountability
How Jacksonville City Schools uses Frontline Inventory & Help Desk Management to track assets, provide an easy-to-use way to submit help desk tickets, and make sound purchasing decisions

Read More

3. Talk to Your Vendors

This is a great time for a good summer recap with your vendors. Call them. Discuss what worked, what didn’t, and how to plan for the upcoming year.

Ask them to help you with:

  • Tagging and deployment
  • Providing an electronic list of asset details (tag number, serial number, make, model, memory, warranty)
  • Warranty and repair
  • Pick-up and disposal

Ideally, this isn’t your first real conversation with them. But if it is, start now.

4. Plan Your Trainings Early

Ongoing staff training is key to a successful asset management program. Summer gives you time to plan for the upcoming school year. Figure out the rhythm. How often? What’s essential? What do folks keep forgetting year after year? Consider organizing sessions by new vs. returning employees, or by grade level, so examples feel relevant.

These trainings also let you reinforce the district’s vision and goals. Don’t just train — rally. Make the vision feel real, not just a slide deck. Bring your team together and decide how to use data to motivate staff. If no one knows their tasks are being tracked, progress may stall. Set realistic goals, track them, and celebrate milestones. A little confetti goes a long way.

5. Come Up with a Plan for Your Transitioned Inventory

Devices often wind up in unexpected places. Renovations, 1:1 rollouts, staff turnover, deep cleaning, or changes in room use can all lead to misplaced items or outdated records.

Your system should know who has what, where, and why. Walk through your buildings, locate missing inventory, and return everything to its correct place before the school year begins.

Looking for a smarter way to manage all of this?

Frontline’s Asset Management solution was built for K-12 teams who are tired of chasing cables and spreadsheets. It helps you track every device from delivery to retirement, tie assets to funding sources, reduce loss, and make the most of your team’s time. Summer planning just got a whole lot easier. Learn more about Frontline Asset Management.


 

Ryan Estes

Ryan is a Customer Marketing Manager for the global award-winning Content Team at Frontline Education. He spends his time writing, podcasting, and talking to leaders in K-12 education

Buyer’s Guide: Evaluating IEP Management Systems

Is your IEP system helping you live up to the promises you’ve made to students with disabilities ― or is it inhibiting student progress and adding work and frustration to your plate? As with any complex system, getting a clear view of what is working well and what could be better can be a challenge. The bottom line is that your IEP system should work for you, not the other way around.

Here are 5 questions you can ask to determine if your IEP system is checking off all the right boxes, or if there’s room for improvement, and what to look for if you are searching for a new system.

1. Does my IEP system proactively ensure compliance?

Compliance is critical for every school district supporting students with disabilities. Does your IEP system get it right the first time? Or do you spend time fixing mistakes that seem to show up just when you’re facing a deadline to complete required reports?

Three primary components of compliance:
  • Sequencing and timelines
  • Data validation
  • Permissions and privacy

You rely on your IEP system to make sure no steps are out of sequence. That timelines are accurate from referral to evaluations to eligibility determination and the initial IEP meeting. You never want to end up with an evaluation showing a later date than your eligibility date.

Do you have dirty data? Ouch! Validations prevent users from entering dates out of sequence, using the wrong field or category, or omitting relevant data. It takes a lot less time to make sure it’s done right the first time than correcting mistakes later. A quality system should not only identify the error and send error alerts but also identify where the error is and lead the user back to fix it.

Permissions and privacy settings should ensure every level of permission is configurable inside your system. Can you easily assign roles to control access to student data? A strong permission element is one of the best ways to proactively ensure compliance and save time and frustration.

Look for these key features in an IEP system to help ensure compliance:
  • Alert appropriate staff when timelines are approaching or are not met
  • Perform validations at every level to promote accurate data entry
  • Pre-populate fields to prevent duplicate data entry, save time, and protect data accuracy
  • Prevent staff from bypassing steps/events

 

2. Is my IEP system adaptable?

What are the most time-consuming tasks for your system users? Most districts list these as the top four: preparing IEP documents, enforcing compliance, determining special education eligibility, and using technology. Your IEP system should help users manage those tasks and save time. And as your processes change due to school closures, regulatory changes, or for any other reason, your system should be able to adapt to your evolving needs.

You may enjoy this hand-picked content:

[Infographic] Where Does Special Educator Time Go?

Similarly, when states make changes to required data, do you have the control to change a field from “not required” to “required” in your system? Or include it for validation or make it auto-fillable? Features in your IEP system that your district can manage save time and frustration.

An adaptable IEP system addresses each of those issues when it:
  • Accommodates your process or workflow rather than determining it
  • Allows for configurability without imposing additional costs (or vendor involvement)
  • Supports process management as opposed to document management
  • Allows you to adapt to changing regulatory and business environments quickly

Does your system accommodate your processes? Or does it determine them? Let’s say your workflow calls for changing the sequence of a series of events. Can you or your vendor make these changes? Can you modify the sequence without imposing additional costs and spending a lot of time? Can you adjust user data access levels so staff members and providers see only the data they need based on their role without hard-coding it? It boils down to whether your system supports process management instead of mere document management.

What kinds of flexibility and functionality should you look for in an adaptable IEP system?
  1. Workflow: system is built around your process and is responsive to changes in your workflow.
  2. Data access: data should inform you on the decisions you need to make, not just support the decisions already made.
  3. Form creation: should not require major customization efforts, additional cost, or vendor involvement.
  4. User permissions: should support as many user roles as necessary in your environment and adapt for users with multiple functions.
  5. Interoperability: Compatibility and integration with external systems is critical.

 

3. Is my IEP system only an IEP system?

Many IEP systems districts use are built exclusively around the IEP planning process. But you know that the IEP is only one step in supporting students. Choosing a vendor with integrated solutions that address service delivery and Medicaid reimbursement can go a long way in making the entire process easier.

There’s a tremendous amount of management that goes on in special education and related departments that extends well beyond the development of an IEP. Your IEP system should be able to manage all of them.

Answer these questions about your system to decide if it’s responsive enough for you. Can you:
  • Manage the pre-referral and evaluation process?
  • Track the delivery of services against the IEP?
  • Estimate resource needs based on IEP information?
  • Monitor student progress easily?
  • Allocate personnel more efficiently?
  • Cut down on staff travel time?
  • Validate Medicaid claims against the IEP?
  • Optimize Medicaid reimbursements?
  • Access and manage programs for other special populations (e.g. Section 504, RTI/MTSS, Gifted & Talented, and English Learner) for a better view of the whole child?
For effective and efficient implementation of IEPs, your IEP system should help you:

Ultimately, when considering IEP systems, you should ask: Is this just an IEP system or can it do a whole lot more for you?

 

4. Does my IEP system support data-driven decision making?

Compliance is no longer the sole primary target today for special education teams. Program performance is another critical priority.

With the Results Driven Accountability (RDA) framework introduced in 2014, expectations shifted from compliance to results. Not only do you have to dot the I’s and cross the T’s, but you need to measure student growth. We should be channeling resources for the best positive outcome and providing supports and interventions that work. IEP systems must give you better visibility at every level for dynamic decision-making.

You may enjoy this hand-picked content:

[Video] 10 Sources of Data to Build a Comprehensive IEP

Your dashboards should give you a sense of where every child is in the process and provide service data showing what you’re actually doing for students. Do you know if students require compensatory services? Do you have clear visibility into costs of IEP meetings and training? Do you have a professional development issue? Can you address provider needs with training to gain more service hours for working with students?

 

5. How does my IEP vendor ensure we are reaping the full benefit of our system?

What is the vendor’s responsibility in making sure that you get the maximum benefit from the system? Has your vendor acted as a partner? Is your vendor working side by side with you during both the planning phase and the implementation phase? This should be true not just when a new system is first launched, but throughout the useable lifetime of that system.

Do you have open access to comprehensive and sustainable training?
  • On-site and virtual training options
  • Training by user type (i.e. administrator, teachers, provider, etc.)
  • Trainer of trainers (TOT) model for large implementations
  • Additional resources and training opportunities to support system adoption
Do you have access to ongoing support?
  • Dedicated helpdesk
  • Contextual in-system training documentation/knowledge base
  • User groups for a feedback loop from end-users and administrators
  • Ongoing performance monitoring, assessment, and reporting

 

Real Cost-Benefit of the Right IEP System

If your system produces improved student outcomes, reduces due process costs, and increases dependability of service delivery, then you have what you need. Not only that, but you are likely to notice increased job satisfaction among district staff and providers along with expanded utilization of resources. It all comes down to better results for students and staff.

 

Does your IEP system help you improve student outcomes, get a clear view of the whole child, and save staff time? Frontline Special Education Management checks off all these boxes. Here’s how

 

Not Just for Academics: Expanding RTI/MTSS to Provide Behavioral and Social-Emotional Support

Listen to the Podcast!

 

In my early years as a school psychologist, I worked at Thornland Elementary School (fictitious name). Thornland was an urban school with committed teachers, students eager to learn and a behavioral environment that approached…chaos. In fact, when I first arrived, documented disciplinary office referrals at this 500-student building hovered at around 1000 per year — with many additional classroom removals occurring that were never recorded.

Given this school’s potential as a place of learning, what went wrong? At Thornland, positive behaviors were not explicitly taught. Instead, teachers simply assumed that students already knew adults’ behavioral expectations and chose to misbehave anyway. Furthermore, each educator applied his or her own standards in judging appropriate behavior, with wide variation across settings. Unsurprisingly, students often struggled in these instructional environments. Teachers in different classrooms applied different behavioral standards. And instructors’ primary means to ‘teach’ those standards was highly reactive through use of punishments such as class removal. Behavior management at Thornland lurched from one seeming crisis to another, and staff morale was low.

RTI/MTSS: A System to Manage Behaviors School-Wide

In the years since I worked at Thornland, the RTI/MTSS movement has spread across the country, employing research findings to bring innovative solutions to seemingly intractable school problems. We now know that schools can turn around their behavioral climate by adopting an RTI/MTSS model in which staff works together to provide graduated positive support to general-education students to match their social-emotional or behavioral needs (Grosche & Volpe, 2013). (Of course, students classified with behavioral disorders receive positive behavioral support separately as overseen by an IEP Team or Section 504 Committee.)

This model includes a continuum of behavior-intervention services distributed across 3 levels or tiers. At Tier 1, the classroom teacher teaches behavioral expectations and has a toolkit of ideas to proactively manage class-wide behaviors. At Tier 2, the school sets up programs such as Check & Connect that link unmotivated learners to mentors who can provide coaching support and encouragement. At Tier 3, the Problem-Solving team has the capacity to complete Functional Behavioral Assessments (FBAs) and Behavior Intervention Plans (BIPs) for students with the most intense behavioral needs.

Building an RTI/MTSS model for behavior is not easy. It can require 3-5 years of sustained effort — an understandable timeline when one considers that schools often must make do with existing resources and can move forward only as quickly as their staff is able to assimilate changes to their professional practice. Nonetheless, implementing an RTI/MTSS model can truly transform a school, with problem behaviors no longer significantly interfering with student performance, classroom instruction and teacher job satisfaction.

 
[ctt template=”9″ link=”6Gn3c” via=”no” ]“Building an RTI/MTSS model for behavior is not easy. Nonetheless, it can truly transform a school.” #RTI/MTSS [/ctt]
 

Managing Behaviors: Adopt a Positive School-Wide Focus

RTI/MTSS for behavior provides a clear blue-print for action, with specific elements that schools implement over time. But the most important work for any school thinking about adopting RTI/MTSS to address behaviors happens before implementation even begins: At the outset, the school ensures that all stakeholders understand and accept a handful of fundamental principles of positive behavior intervention. When staff collectively believe in these principles, the odds for success with the RTI/MTSS behavior model is high. When staff are divided or fail to support these principles, failure is a virtual certainty.

5 Principles to Set Staff Up for Success in Using an RTI/MTSS Behavioral Model

  1. Goal behaviors should be defined. Teachers, support staff, administration and students should reach consensus on the core set of ‘goal’ behaviors they expect learners to display across school settings. Goal behaviors should be ambitious and, when possible, stated in positive terms. For example, one school selected as a positive-behavior goal, “Students share their opinions and are respectful when they disagree with others.”
  2. Goal behaviors should be taught. Once the school community agrees on a collective set of behavioral expectations, those pro-social, pro-learning behaviors become the foundation for an open, transparent ‘behavioral curriculum.’ Just as instructors explicitly teach the academic curriculum, so too do educators throughout the school instruct learners in desired behaviors — and provide performance feedback, encouragement and reinforcement as coaching tools to help students successfully to adopt these behaviors.
  3. Misbehaviors present a teaching opportunity. Educators should respond to problem behavior by re-teaching and reinforcing behavioral expectations rather than simply punishing the student. Of course, students do sometimes require disciplinary consequences when they intentionally and repeatedly violate school rules. But the initial teacher response when a student begins to stray from behavioral expectations should be to respond in a manner that aims to reengage that learner as quickly as possible in active, productive learning (Leach & Helf, 2016).
  4. Adults are behavior models. While educators explicitly teach and reinforce goal behaviors, they must also demonstrate those positive behaviors through their own conduct. Instructors who set the expectation that individuals will treat each other with respect, for example, would be expected to model the goal behavior by using a respectful voice and manner when interacting with students. The modeling of positive behavior is one of the most powerful of RTI/MTSS teaching tools.
  5. Data drives behavioral support. Schools employing an RTI/MTSS behavioral model must routinely collect data at the building and student levels to monitor the effectiveness of their behavior supports. At the building level, the school tracks Office Disciplinary Referrals (ODRs) to find and respond to ‘hot-spots’ — classrooms and other locations in the building (e.g., lunchroom) that generate disproportionately high rates of referrals. At the individual level, the school uses ODRs and perhaps other data sources to identify and provide intervention support to specific students who display challenging behaviors across settings.

Changing Paradigms: The Promise of an RTI/MTSS Behavior Framework

An increasing number of schools are building an RTI/MTSS model that teaches and reinforces expected behaviors in general-education classrooms. It’s worth asking, however, why more educational settings have not adopted this positive approach to school-wide behavior management. One explanation is that teachers see that punishment works — at least in the short term. After all, classroom removal and related ‘zero-tolerance’ responses often do result in immediate reduction of problem behaviors (Maag, 2001). Over time, however, schools that over-rely on punishment produce students who are at increased risk of continuing problem behavior, disengagement with school and failure to graduate (Skiba et al., 2006 ).

 
[ctt template=”9″ link=”6Gn3c” via=”no” ]“The promise of the RTI/MTSS positive-behavior paradigm is that it treats behavior as a transparent, open curriculum.” #RTI/MTSS [/ctt]
 

In contrast, the promise of the RTI/MTSS positive-behavior paradigm is that it treats behavior as a transparent, open curriculum. School stakeholders define the kind of school community they wish to create and then teach and reinforce the behaviors that will make this community a reality. For schools like Thornland, the RTI/MTSS model for behavior presents a path to move from a climate of behavioral turmoil to orderly classrooms with engaged students.

Are behavioral issues approached in a reactive way in your district? Is this method affecting staff and student morale? When evaluating if an RTI/MTSS model can help address behavioral challenges, consider how a data management system that communicates with your SIS can empower district staff.

 
References

Grosche, M., & Volpe, R. J. (2013). Response-to-intervention (RTI) as a model to facilitate inclusion for students with learning and behaviour problems. European Journal of Special Needs Education, 28, 254-269.

Leach, D., & Helf, S. (2016). Using a hierarchy of supportive consequences to address problem behaviors in the classroom. Intervention in School and Clinic, 52(1), 29-33.

Maag, J. W. (2001). Reflections on the disuse of positive reinforcement in schools. Exceptional Children, 67(2), 173-186.

Skiba, R. J., Reynolds, C. R., Graham, S., Shera, P., Conoley, J. C., & Garcia-Vazquez, E. (2006). Are zero tolerance policies effective in the schools? An evidentiary review and recommendations. Report by the American Psychological Association of the Zero Tolerance Task Force. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/zero-tolerance.pdf.

Wright J. A. & Dusek, J. B. (1998). Compiling school base rates for disruptive behaviors from student disciplinary referral data. School Psychology Review. 27, 138–147.

Why K-12 School Districts Should Go Digital with Time Tracking

Manual time tracking methods are prone to payroll errors; they’re an inefficient use of time and paper; and they make reporting on trends and proving compliance unnecessarily difficult. And yet, a surprising number of school districts still use paper time records to capture employee time.
 
This could be due to a number of factors: restrictive budgets, resistance to change, complicated reporting processes for groups of employees with variable schedules. Fortunately, technology has adapted to overcome most of these obstacles.
 
By going digital with time tracking, districts can easily report on variable schedules, overtime, comp time, holiday pay, employees who work in different locations and leave time accrued. What does this really mean? More accurate pay for district employees and increased FSLA compliance for the school district as an employer!
 

“The amount of time that our supervisors now have to spend approving timesheets is minimal compared to what it used to be, and that alone would have been reason enough to go with the system.”

Gary Lambert, Director of Technology, Beekmantown Central School District

 

How can going digital with time tracking benefit your district?

Managing paper time sheets can be very time-consuming and subject to error.
Going digital can help:

  • Accurate payroll: Districts can ensure employees are paid accurately for the time they’ve worked. Going digital can help avoid errors caused by manually entering employee time, which can be a significant source of frustration for all parties involved.
  • Compliance: When it comes to complying with labor laws and regulations like FSLA, ACA or FMLA, it’s critical to know timecards are accurate and complete. With a digital time tracking system, districts can ensure compliance and reduce the risk of penalties or facing legal issues.
  • Efficiency: Having the confidence that employee hours and attendance are accurate will allow administrators to focus on more important items or emergency tasks as they pop up.
  • Visibility: With a digital time tracking system, school leaders can get real time and historical views of where employees are or have been.

 

Handpicked content: [White Paper]

Time Tracking and Union Negotiations | How to approach your bargaining unit to implement a time & attendance management system
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What questions should you ask when looking for a digital time tracking system?

 

Does it integrate with payroll?

Some of the top reasons to move to a digital time tracking are to save time and reduce errors when running payroll. But if there’s no integration between your time tracking and payroll systems, those benefits can be lost!
 

Can the system handle multiple bargaining agreements?

It’s critical that a time tracking system can handle the unique needs of your school district — including multiple bargaining units, complex payroll rules and contracted hours. Be sure the system can accommodate a wide range of clock rules, such as differences in rates or rounding of time, and apply the rules to employee time automatically.
 

How does the software handle employee absences?

Does the software give you the full picture of employee attendance? Is there one place to log-in, making it easier on you and your employees to manage hours and absences? When time tracking software is integrated with attendance, districts can save time running payroll and managing leave accruals or requests.
 

How exactly does the software assist with compliance?

Consider how the tool will assist in maintaining compliance with government regulations and programs such as ACA or FMLA. Can it classify and track days worked and leave taken? Administrators should be able to quickly identify the number of hours and days employees have worked and alert them when thresholds are about to be met or exceeded.
 

Handpicked content: [Case Study]

Clocking Out of Timecard Misery | How Grayson County Public Schools found a better way to keep track of employee time, avoid errors, and confidently reclaim time for administrators, teachers, and staff.
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Ready to streamline employee time tracking with software built specifically for K-12?
Learn about Frontline Time & Attendance