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Gorham School Department
Dennis Crowe
Director of Technology
2,700 Students
Gorham, ME

Gorham Sees Immediate Benefits from Infinite Campus
When Dennis Crowe left the Bonny Eagle Schools in 2008 and took a position with Gorham School Department, he had several years of positive experience with Infinite Campus as director of technology. Knowing Gorham wanted a system for standards-based grading, special education, and parent communication, Crowe highly recommended Infinite Campus. Within a short time Gorham has seen many benefits, time saving efficiencies, and significant cost savings with Infinite Campus.

History with Infinite Campus
In 2006, Infinite Campus was completely unknown in Maine. At Bonny Eagle, Crowe made the choice to purchase Infinite Campus long before the state of Maine purchased the Infinite Campus State Edition. The Bonny Eagle selection committee conducted a thorough review of the vendors and narrowed it down to two vendors: PowerSchool and Infinite Campus. After the demonstrations, the committee voted 15-1 in favor of Infinite Campus.

“PowerSchool had a significant presence in Maine, and would have seemed like the safe choice,” said Crowe. “But we knew we wanted the best student information system we could find and that was Infinite Campus.”

Administrators, teachers, and parents found Infinite Campus easy to use, saving time in data entry, ensuring more accurate information and improving communications.

Gorham’s Needs
When Crowe was hired at Gorham as director of technology, there were many challenges with their system. The district realized they needed a repository for historical data, a system that could handle standards-based grading and special education. It had been six years and the portal for parents had not been opened. Crowe’s close familiarity with Infinite Campus allowed Gorham to learn about all the advantages of this system. A decision was made to purchase Infinite Campus.

Infinite Campus Benefits
Having only been live with Infinite Campus since September 2009, Gorham is already realizing the benefits of integration and a web-based system. “Our K-2 grade teachers used to have to do standards-based grading on a spreadsheet. They now put all the required information directly into Infinite Campus. It will save a great deal of time and is easily accessible to everyone.”

Gorham is also very excited about Campus Special Education. They no longer have to worry about uploading demographic info because it’s all right there. IEP’s used to be placed in teacher’s mailboxes. Now it’s all in the computer in real time.

Communicating with parents is essential for student success. Having gone so many years without a portal, Gorham plans to open the Campus Portal before the end of the second quarter. “Engaging parents with the district is very important to our goals,” said Crowe. “The Campus Portal will support our commitment to improving parent/school relations.”

At Gorham, teachers and staff can easily access Campus Reports. “We trained a few key individuals on ad hoc filters,” said Crowe. “It was so easy they never had to ask me for data again. They couldn’t do this with the previous system as the report writer is too complicated. The ease of the Infinite Campus WYSIWYG report writer is huge – putting the work at the level of the user who needs it is efficient and just makes sense.”

At Bonny Eagle, Crowe recalls the importance of tracking behavior over time. Principals had a thorough record of student information and principals could be proactive with interventions. “Principals loved Infinite Campus,” said Crowe. “In fact, they used Palm Pilots and watched kids in the hallway, looked up their schedule, and determined whether they should be in class. The mobile interface was a great tool for keeping kids on track.”

Easy State Reporting
A tremendous asset for Gorham is that Infinite Campus actively syncs with the Maine Department of Education. “State reporting is so easy. You make a change at the district level and you can immediately see the change at the state,” said Crowe.

“This is a big deal for both accuracy and hours spent checking and inputting data,” Crowe continued. “In the past, three people would work 40+ hours only on state enrollment during October, April and December. It has saved us so much time and money.”

More and more Maine districts are choosing Infinite Campus. Crowe understands that having Maine Department of Education offering Infinite Campus for free is just a bonus. “Even if we had to pay for it, it would be worth every penny,” said Crowe. “It is simply the best student information system on the market.”