District Snapshot

District

Lufkin Independent School District

Location

Lufkin, Angelina County, Texas

Key Contact

Heath Wethington

CFO

Before Frontline	After Frontline
Before Frontline Compiling the SHARS cost report required weeks of manual effort: gathering payroll records, contracts, transportation data, and trip logs, then calculating and categorizing everything by hand.	After Frontline Much of that manual work has been streamlined. CFO Heath Wethington can now pull payroll data in 20–30 minutes rather than spending weeks assembling and crunching numbers.
Before Frontline Transportation documentation required scanning hundreds of pages of trip logs for each submission, adding significant time and effort to an already labor-intensive process.	After Frontline Trip logs and supporting documentation are stored directly in Frontline, eliminating the need to scan large volumes of paper and giving the district faster access to records when they’re needed.
Before Frontline Finance and Special Education worked in silos, making it easy to miss participant changes, lose track of mid-year updates, and discover discrepancies too late to address before reporting.	After Frontline Monthly meetings between the CFO and the Special Education Director create a regular checkpoint to review documentation, stay aligned on participant changes, and catch issues before the cost report is due.
Before Frontline There was limited confidence in whether all eligible services were captured, and the district could not reliably project SHARS revenue for budget planning.	After Frontline Centralized documentation and structured workflows give the district stronger compliance confidence and a foundation for more consistent reimbursement claims over time.

A Better Way to Manage SHARS Reimbursement 

When Heath Wethington joined Lufkin ISD as CFO, he inherited a SHARS cost reporting process built almost entirely on manual effort. Every year, compiling the data needed to submit the cost report meant pulling payroll records, reviewing contracts, organizing transportation logs, and running calculations across multiple spreadsheets resulting in a process that regularly stretched across weeks. The burden fell almost entirely on Heath, and there was no easy way to know whether every eligible service was being captured.

Frontline is helping Lufkin ISD build a stronger, more confident, more collaborative process around service tracking and reimbursement. The district is still maturing that process, but the direction is clear: less manual work, better documentation, and a more proactive approach to compliance.

From Weeks of Manual Work to Minutes of Reporting

Before Frontline, Heath described the cost report preparation as an all-consuming project. He would go through payroll reports, catalog expenses by quarter, pull transportation data, organize trip documentation, and then verify everything before submitting through the state portal. The work was time-consuming, error-prone, and heavily dependent on his own institutional knowledge to hold it together.

With Frontline, that picture has changed significantly. Heath’s team can now pull the payroll data needed for the cost report in about 20 to 30 minutes. Instead of weeks of manual number-crunching, much of the calculation and data organization happens within the system, freeing Heath to focus on reviewing and submitting rather than assembling everything from scratch.

Stronger Collaboration Between Finance and Special Education

One of the most meaningful changes at Lufkin ISD has been the development of a regular working relationship between Heath and Irma Herrera, the district’s Special Education Director. Before Frontline, the two departments operated largely in silos. The cost report was something the finance team had to piece together after the fact, often without realizing that participant changes or staffing updates had occurred mid-year. 

Now, Heath and Irma meet monthly to review documentation, identify participant changes, and make sure nothing falls through the cracks before the cost report is due. Those meetings have become an important part of the district’s workflow, giving both departments a shared view of what is happening and what needs to be addressed before it becomes a reporting problem.

Greater Compliance Confidence 

From a compliance standpoint, Heath noted that having documentation housed in one system gives the district far more confidence in its records. In previous years, supporting documentation like transportation trip logs had to be scanned in bulk — hundreds of pages of paper — before each submission. Now, much of that documentation is captured and stored directly in Frontline, making it accessible and organized when it is needed. 

Heath shared that if a SHARS claim were ever reviewed or audited, the district is now in a stronger position because the data is already there. There is less uncertainty about whether supporting documentation exists, because the system holds it.

A Budget Impact That Could Be Significant

Lufkin ISD has seen its SHARS reimbursement decline over the past several years, dropping from close to a million dollars annually to below half a million. The causes have been mixed: shifting rates, incomplete documentation from prior years, and in the most recent cycle, a gap in transportation logs caused by an internal miscommunication that left the district without records for most of the year. 

Wethington is candid about that setback. But he is also direct about what better tracking can mean going forward. Right now, SHARS revenue is so unpredictable that the district does not include it in the budget at all. Consistent, accurate documentation could change that.

Structured Support That Keeps the Process on Track 

Heath also highlighted how Frontline’s task-based workflow has made the submission process easier to manage. Rather than relying on back-and-forth emails to track what documentation is needed, Frontline provides a clear repository of tasks with notes on what is required, where to upload it, and where any questions or clarifications are logged. That visibility has helped Heath’s team stay organized and responsive throughout the reporting cycle.

Key Outcomes for Lufkin ISD

SHARS cost reporting workload reduced from weeks of manual effort to a streamlined, data-driven process.

Payroll data that previously took weeks to compile can now be pulled in approximately 20–30 minutes.

Monthly Finance and Special Education meetings keep both teams aligned on participant changes and documentation needs.

Transportation and service documentation centralized in one system, eliminating paper scanning and improving compliance readiness.

Greater confidence in documentation quality and a stronger foundation for consistent, auditable SHARS claims.

Clear task management workflow from Frontline gives the finance team visibility into what is needed and where to provide it.

Building Toward Stronger, More Predictable Reimbursement

Lufkin ISD is still in the process of maturing its SHARS documentation practices. The district has faced real challenges, including a year with incomplete transportation records, and Wethington does not overstate where things stand. But the direction is clear. With service tracking centralized, collaboration between Finance and Special Education established, and documentation confidence growing, the district has a foundation it did not have before. 

For other CFOs navigating the complexity of SHARS, Wethington’s experience points to what the right system and the right support can make possible: less time spent on manual work, better alignment across departments, and a more reliable path to the reimbursement the district has earned.