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Case Study

How a Two-Person HR Team Scaled Service, Compliance, and Control Across a Growing School District

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District Background

Location

Woodhaven, Michigan

K-12 Enrollment
  • 5,500
Teachers & Staff
  • ~720 Staff
Before FrontlineAfter Frontline
Leave overuse went unnoticed. Manual tracking led to some employees overusing leave and ~$25,000 in unrecoverable payroll overpayments.Real-time leave tracking prevents loss. Continuous visibility into leave banks has eliminated repeat overpayments and enabled early intervention.
Payroll reconciliation was slow and manual. Paper time sheets often conflicted with absence records, taking 4–8 hours per pay cycle to reconcile.Reconciliation time dropped to ~1 hour. Time & Attendance and Absence Management now align automatically and flag issues immediately.
Paper evaluations increased compliance risk. Evaluations and contracts moved through Google Sheets and paper, creating audit risk and administrative drag.Digital records improve compliance confidence. Evaluations, contracts, and training are tracked centrally, reducing audit effort and missed requirements.

While many Michigan school districts have faced enrollment decline or volatility, Woodhaven-Brownstown experienced steady student growth for more than a decade, eventually stabilizing at roughly 5,500 students. That growth was backed by disciplined financial stewardship and sustained community investment, including a $160 million bond project currently underway. 

“We’ve been in one of the few school districts in Michigan that have had consistent student growth for over 10 straight years,” said Greg Roberts, the district’s HR director. This created opportunity, but it also exposed operational strain, especially in human resources. 

The HR department consists of Greg and one administrative assistant. Together, they support teachers, administrators, professional staff, roughly 150 hourly employees, and close to 200 contracted service workers across transportation, custodial, food service, and maintenance.  

Before Frontline, the district’s HR operation relied on persistence and institutional knowledge rather than systems built to scale. Paper files filled cabinets, leave balances lived in spreadsheets, and evaluations moved slowly through email and Google Sheets. Nothing was technically “broken,” but everything had friction, and friction carries cost. 

By consolidating HR operations into a single, connected Frontline platform and committing to using it fully, Woodhaven-Brownstown changed the trajectory of its HR function without adding staff. HR satisfaction climbed from roughly 70% in 2021 to 91% by 2024. Payroll reconciliation time dropped from most of a workday to about an hour. Paper personnel files disappeared entirely. The two-person HR office became a high-service, high-control operation built to support a growing district. 

No Margin for Inefficiency 

Woodhaven-Brownstown’s workforce reflects the complexity of a modern K–12 district. Classroom teachers and building administrators, instructional specialists, secretarial staff, hourly employees, contracted service teams: each group brings different schedules, pay structures, leave rules, and compliance requirements. 

What the district has never had is surplus administrative capacity. 

“Our HR office is myself and an admin assistant, and that’s it,” Greg explained. “Other districts our size have four or five people in this role.” 

Because every inefficiency lands directly on the same two desks, the HR department needs to maintain control, accuracy, and responsiveness without wearing out the people responsible for holding everything together. 

When Everything Is Manual, Everything Slows Down

Keeping Classrooms Staffed

When Greg arrived at the district, staffing anxiety defined much of HR’s daily rhythm. Recruiting was an ever-present struggle, and classroom coverage felt fragile. “When I first came here, we were constantly trying to recruit teaching staff,” he recalled. “I felt like we were always running short, always scrambling.” 

“When I first came here, we were constantly trying to recruit and get teaching staff. I felt like we were always running short, always scrambling.”

Greg Roberts
HR Director

Systems Used But Not Fully Leveraged

The district had Frontline Recruiting & Hiring and Absence Management, but neither was used to the fullest potential. Absence Management was only used to find substitutes. Leave tracking existed, but not in a way HR could trust in real time. 

Without live visibility into leave balances, overuse went unnoticed until payroll caught it, often months later. “That year, we had overpaid 12 different employees because they used more leave time than they had available to them,” Greg said. “And we couldn’t recoup it because it had gone over six months.” 

The impact was immediate and measurable. About $25,000 in unrecoverable overpayments disappeared from the district’s budget. For perspective, a single teacher absence at the top of the pay scale could cost around $500 per day, before adding substitute expenses. 

“What people didn’t realize,” Greg added, “is that the time sheet that was signed off by the employee and the administrator and sent over to central office for them to pay didn’t match Absence Management.” 

That was just the beginning of the pain felt every payroll cycle. Hourly employees tracked time on paper sign-in sheets, self-reporting hours every two weeks. Payroll and accounting spent between four and eight hours reconciling discrepancies.

Paper-Based Evaluations and Compounding Risk

Evaluations mirrored the same manual pattern. Teachers were evaluated using Google Sheets and paper signatures that moved manually between buildings and central office. “We were completely doing paper-pencil evaluations,” Greg said. “I’d send it to the principal, they’d sign them and check them off and get it back to me, and then I put them in their file. That’s 1999.” 

State reporting amplified the risk. Any discrepancy triggered time-consuming audits, forcing staff to hunt down paper records to prove compliance.

“We’re Going to Use This the Right Way” 

The inflection point was a shift in mindset. 

Greg recognized that Absence Management had always been capable of more than substitute placement. Used properly, it could become a real-time control system for leave, preventing errors instead of documenting them after the fact. 

Woodhaven-Brownstown made a deliberate choice: one platform, used fully, would outperform a collection of disconnected tools. Responsiveness, accuracy, and employee self-service all mattered. The district decided to add Frontline Central, Time & Attendance, Professional Growth, and Human Capital Analytics. 

One login. One connected system.

From Hiring to Exit, All in One Place 

Real-Time Absence Control 

Leave banks now update continuously, giving HR current-year visibility while payroll maintains its role as the historical record. Weekly and monthly reviews replaced end-of-year surprises, allowing issues to be addressed before they become financial problems. Losses that once became clear months later are now prevented altogether.

Time & Attendance Without Reconciliation

Absences now flow directly into timekeeping records, eliminating the manual cross-checking that once consumed hours each pay cycle. Discrepancies are apparent immediately, not after payroll has already run. 

“They cannot not match,” Greg said. “It will give you a red flag that says you’re doubling time.” 

What once took four to eight hours of reconciliation now takes about an hour. As Greg explained, “The more powerful version of that is that it tracks your employee’s time where they can see real, live, actual data without having to do an import or export,” adding that the reconciliation burden dropped because “Absent Management and Time & Attendance match.”

Digital Evaluations at Scale

After evaluating multiple options, the district selected Frontline to manage professional learning and evaluations. “I worked with our team, and we went through and we looked at the different evaluation tools, and it just made sense to go with Frontline Professional Growth,” Greg said. 

Paper workflows disappeared, state reporting became simpler, and the risk of missed probationary evaluations dropped sharply as evaluations moved into a consistent, trackable system.

Frontline Central as the HR Command Center

The employee lifecycle now lives in one place. “Starting from the time that they’re hired… I can go right into the Frontline Central portal,” Greg explained. “’Here’s your offer letter. Here’s all your paperwork.’” 

Personnel files are fully digital, and life events, payroll changes, exit interviews, and system access are managed centrally. “It’s all in one process,” Greg said. “I don’t have paper personnel files anymore. It’s all here.”

It’s their evaluation, it’s their time, it’s their absence tracking, it’s their time sheet, it’s their forms, it’s their personnel file. I don’t have paper personnel files anymore. It’s all here.”

Greg Roberts
HR Director

What began with roughly 10 forms expanded to more than 100, covering everything from routine updates to compliance-driven documentation. 

Learning and Compliance Without Guesswork

Onboarding and training are now assigned and tracked in Frontline Central. “We couldn’t have done that in the past,” Greg said. “We could have only sent it and hoped they completed it.” Annual compliance training, district-wide AI initiatives, and off-cycle onboarding are now consistent, trackable, and visible to HR. 

Proof, Not Paper, When It Matters Most

As HR operations moved into Frontline, documentation shifted from paper trails to verifiable records. Handbook acknowledgments and technology agreements are now tracked digitally, creating clear proof when questions arise. As Greg explained, “When you do something that’s in violation of the handbook, it helps me with our legal team… They signed off that they got it.” Instead of searching for signatures after the fact, HR can quickly confirm what employees received and acknowledged. 

Teacher contracts follow the same pattern. Contracts are distributed and collected electronically, eliminating the annual scramble to track paperwork across buildings. Greg has shared this change with peers, noting, “For that very simple thing, it’s worth it,” especially as districts scale and staffing complexity grows. 

Training completion and evaluations (in Frontline Professional Growth) are also documented and auditable, reducing risk during audits and ensuring required steps are completed on time rather than reconstructed later. 

Insight Without Extra Work

Attendance trends, recruiting source data, and employee-level insights are accessible without manual data pulls or stitched-together reports. Instead of exporting spreadsheets or reconciling information across multiple systems, HR leaders can answer questions as they arise using data that is already current and connected. 

That access changes the nature of the work. Greg can review district-wide attendance patterns, examine individual employee histories, or evaluate recruiting sources without asking someone else to run reports or spending hours assembling information by hand. As he put it, “I’m still going one place to get there. I’m not going to three different programs.” 

The result is not just better visibility, but better decision-making. Less time is spent chasing information, and more time is spent using it — whether that means identifying trends earlier, responding to administrator questions with confidence, or grounding decisions in real data instead of assumptions.  

More Service, Less Risk, Better Outcomes

HR satisfaction rose from roughly 70% in fall 2021 to 91% by fall 2024, reflecting both improved responsiveness and clearer processes. “What we’re able to do within Frontline is that I really can be more responsive,” Greg said. “Without them sending me an email, employees can complete a form for what they need, and then we’re able to respond.” 

The prior $25,000 in leave overpayments has not been repeated. Payroll reconciliation time dropped from most of a day to about an hour, and lane changes — salary adjustments tied to additional coursework or earned degrees — now move continuously instead of waiting for fixed processing windows. 

Staffing outcomes followed. “I feel like we’ve been an anomaly,” Greg said. “We are fully staffed on day one and have been for the last three years.” Applicant volume increased significantly as well. “When everybody else is saying they only have one or two applicants for jobs, I’m getting 50 to a hundred.”

“In the last three years, I feel like we’re an anomaly. We are fully staffed day one and have been for the last three years.”

Greg Roberts
HR Director

Culture remains the foundation of that success. “Our number one referral for hires is word of mouth,” Greg said. “And that doesn’t happen if we don’t have a good culture.”

The Platform Works Best When You Use All of It

Over time, Greg found that most frustration with HR systems stems from partial adoption. Clear rules, clear ownership, and full use of the platform matter. When teams understand how tools are meant to function together, fewer errors surface and fewer corrections are required later. 

Simply put, fewer systems mean fewer mistakes. 

Smarter Onboarding, Smarter Training 

Looking ahead, the district plans to expand video-based onboarding for off-cycle hires and continue broadening analytics use beyond HR leadership. New employees hired midyear can now access the same onboarding content as those who start in August, without pulling staff away from daily work. 

That consistency, paired with visibility and scalability, has become essential. For a two-person HR team supporting a growing district, it’s mission critical, not simply a nice-to-have.

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