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Eric Willard, Chief Technology Officer
Debby Hartman, Instructional Technology Coordinator
Community Unit School District #300
Carpentersville, Illinois
20,000 Students

CUSD 300 Achieves Success with Midyear Implementation
Community Unit School District 300 (CUSD 300), which includes 15 diverse communities located in Chicago’s northwest suburbs, serves over 20,000 students. As one of the fastest growing districts in the Midwest, it needed a student information system (SIS) that was innovative and effective. With a board-directed goal to move forward quickly, CUSD 300 chose Infinite Campus® to provide a midyear implementation, appropriate training, and a system to streamline administrative processes.

Search for Functionality
A large fast-growing district must have an integrated, web-based SIS that is accessible to all stakeholders and can provide accurate and real-time data. Prior to implementing Infinite Campus, CUSD 300 had a variety of data management practices.

Teachers developed individual spreadsheets or entered grades on personal grading notebooks. Counselors relied on a variety of paper files for scheduling, tracking behavioral issues and developing individual programs for special needs students. Parents had no outlet to obtain current information about their children’s attendance, achievement or assignments. Administrators struggled to provide the level of data-oriented accountability and analysis that the community and school board members expected of them.

Addressing the need for a comprehensive data management system, Debby Hartman, CUSD 300 Instructional Technology Coordinator, says, “We really did not have an SIS that was adequate to meet our needs. The only people who had access to our previous system were our secretaries and, occasionally, a principal.”

CUSD 300 formed an ad hoc committee made up of teachers, counselors, administrators and central office staff. According to Hartman, “We narrowed our search and did an analysis based on trials and presentations to see which system would work best for us. After viewing and discussing all contenders, Infinite Campus was the best fit for us."

Integration Advantages
CUSD 300 counselors advocated for Infinite Campus. After comparing the inefficiency of their old system and seeing what an integrated web-based system could do, the counseling staff strongly recommended Infinite Campus.

CUSD 300 counselors now access complete demographic information, track behaviors, and special needs, establish graduation plans and schedule effective learning plans for each student. They no longer have to sort through files of accumulated paper reports.

Hartman says, “Counselors love what they can do with Infinite Campus. They see a complete student profile at the touch of a key, which provides for efficient planning, addressing behavior problems, communicating with parents and scheduling.”

Administrators and teachers are also able to track data for accountability and assessment purposes. Parents like the features available through the portal. They are now able to view their child’s grades, transcripts, attendance and other information on line and at their leisure.

Midyear Implementation Success
Changing from one system to another presents challenges. Changing systems during the school year adds additional challenges. “It may have been easier if we were a smaller district. But we have 26 schools and one of our biggest difficulties was all the data-entry differences,” says Hartman. “Things as simple as secretaries entering ‘Avenue’ as Ave, Ave., and Avenue become a big thing.”

To avert the risks presented by a February conversion, CUSD 300 was required to run the old system and the new system in parallel. Fortunately, the district had personnel with experience as well as professional support from Infinite Campus to make it happen.

Leading the way was CUSD 300 Chief Technology Officer, Eric Willard. With extensive experience as the technology decision-maker at schools from Texas to Illinois, Willard was familiar with all aspects of bringing an SIS on line. Willard found Infinite Campus to be an effective partner during the process.
“It went very well. As a matter of fact, having been in this business for 20 years, I have done a lot of conversions. This was perhaps the most organized conversion I’ve ever been involved with,” says Willard. “It is one of the real strengths of Infinite Campus.”

Don’t Skimp on Training
Training district personnel to use a new SIS is more than teaching which key to push. It becomes a matter of a change in culture as much as a change in technology. When a district the size of CUSD 300 changes its SIS, thousands of people are affected.

Prior to Infinite Campus, teachers in CUSD 300 hand-entered attendance or developed individual attendance spreadsheets. While these procedures were slow and inefficient, and generating data was difficult to manage at the district level, teachers were accustomed to the existing procedures. Before the benefits of the new SIS could be realized, training for uniform data entry and stakeholder acceptance had to take place. Infinite Campus provided CUSD 300 with training tailored to accelerate the acceptance of the new system.

Willard states, “Decision makers should not use the cost of training in their criteria for selecting a SIS, because it will make vendors reduce the cost of training in their proposals. In our district we planned for double the amount of training listed in the vendor’s proposal. This assured a successful implementation. We chose to budget a small incremental amount up front for training, rather than pay a larger amount in lost productivity and support costs later.”

Caution for Early Customizing
While the opportunity to tailor Infinite Campus to fit the district exists, Willard urges caution to avoid premature customization. He suggests that the inclination for staff is to try to make a new system work like the old familiar, if non-functional, system.

Addressing issues of system design, Willard says, “I suggest installing any new system as plain vanilla as you possibly can, and waiting a full year before talking about customization. Two things will happen. First, people will figure out that the new way is a lot better than the old, so they won’t need to make the new look like the old. Second, by the end of that first year, there will be so much less to convert that it will save both time and money.”

Sharing Success
Other schools looking for a new SIS are seeking information and direction from CUSD 300 because of its success with Infinite Campus. The district hosts in-house, half-day presentations for interested district staff, pairing them with staff in similar roles, including superintendents, counselors, teachers, secretaries and administrators.

“We enjoy sharing our success with potential Infinite Campus customers, because we want Illinois to have a strong Campus User Group,” said Willard. “We tell prospects about what we did on a district level, and then break out in role-specific groups so individuals can see how that part of the system impacts them. It’s really working, because several new districts from Illinois with whom we met have recently become Campus Customers.”

A Good Decision
The district continues to grow by several hundred students per year, and the need for accurate and efficient reporting is becoming more acute. Reports such as ELL, early childhood, and mandatory discipline extracts have become part of routine reporting and more are added every year. Infinite Campus keeps up with new reporting demands in each release.

“Every time I’m in Infinite Campus, I discover something new. We have more accurate data than ever for state reporting. We no longer do it by hand or rely on 26 different secretaries to give us accurate information. Now we are able to pull it from Infinite Campus,” says Hartman. “Would I change systems? Would I go back? No way!”