Some California Districts have made it their goal to figure out ways to save their schools time and money and service their “customers” better.
For one school in California, its goal was to reduce the time students and parents spent waiting in line during the registration process. The administration understood that students’ and parents’ time is important and wanted to find an effortless way to achieve their goal during registration, a time when students and parents come to school prior to the beginning of school to register their students.
According to Aaron Peralta, Principal of Costa Mesa Middle School in California, implementation of K-12 Online‘s online registration reduced the time spent by students and parents in line to about 45 minutes. The previous year, parents and students waited close to 3 hours. Not only did the online registration system save time for the students and parents, but the easy usage and ability to prepay for school items was a great feature. Unlike some built-in SIS registration systems, K-12 Online is more robust with many features that ultimately save schools time and money.
Third Party Online Registration System vs. your SIS’s built-in Registration System
For example, K-12 Online allows adjunct organizations like foundations and PTAs to be part of the registration system. This allows PTAs to fundraise online during registration which in turn yields higher donations that support many of the schools’ programs., something that built in SIS registrations are incapable of doing. Most SISs do not have a robust form creation and report handling mechanism. However, this is particularly helpful for schools to gather data and more importantly to be able to analysis and report the information collected.
According to Phil D’agostino, Principal of Costa Mesa High School in California, K-12 Online’s online registration has enabled them to build a stronger sense of community, by freeing the administrators from busy work and allowing them to greet students and get to know the new and incoming first year students as they walk on campus. Online registration has also streamlined and economized the entire registration process for the classified workers at their school. They no longer have to run registration for as many days as they used to, and the classified workers can now be in their offices trying to get ready for the start of school. The reduction in the number of registration days would mean financial savings to the school.
Peralta and D’agostino applaud the district for adapting this new technology as it has not only met their “customer service” goal of reducing the line during registration, but also saved time, money and built a stronger sense of community for the school.
