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Rockwood School District
Steve Beatty
Chief Information Officer
Eureka, Missouri
21,800 Students
Rockwood Responds to Growing Information Demands
Rockwood School District, located near St. Louis, Missouri with more than 21,000 students and 30 buildings, needed to update its systems. In 2003, it became clear Rockwood’s in-house technology system could no longer meet the needs of this large and diverse district to maintain their status as a top performing district in the state. Rockwood required centralized data management, flexible functionality, and cost efficiency and looked to Infinite Campus to provide the products and services desired.
Realizing the Need for Change
When Steve Beatty was hired as chief information officer responsible for administrative systems and instructional technology, he knew things needed to change.
The previous system was developed in-house using the IBM iSeries platform. Although it was web-enabled, many job functions were running in the background in batch mode versus real time. After almost four years of development, the system still lacked certain functionality that Rockwood desired, such as scheduling and behavior components. Ongoing maintenance, enhancement requests and state reporting changes were difficult to manage with a limited internal staff as well.
"We needed to update the system to reflect the growing demands of student data management," said Beatty. "We needed a system with a centralized, integrated database providing real-time, web-based access so our stakeholders could utilize the most current information available."
Rockwood conducted a thorough review over six months and narrowed the field to nine possible providers including Infinite Campus.
"Infinite Campus came out on top," said Beatty. "It offered an integrated system with a lot of components in one base package. It met our functional needs and allowed us to implement without a large capital outlay. Infinite Campus was our first choice."
Flexible Functionality
Infinite Campus had six major areas of functionality Rockwood wanted including instruction, curriculum, administration, communications, reporting and analysis.
"Any system selected had to fulfill our functional requirements," said Beatty. "It was important to have a system that lets us capture data about all of our students, provides built-in reporting and analysis of the data, and facilitates state reporting."
Applications also help administrators manage complex student information from tracking enrollment, attendance and behavior, to capturing various family structures and their unique relationships to each student to use for state reporting. Teachers are able to manage attendance, grading and assessments through an intuitive Web interface.
Although the previous system had a parent portal, Rockwood wanted a more intuitive and user-friendly tool for parents. With the Campus Portal, parents had immediate access to their student’s educational experience.
"Currently, we have more than 12,000 grade 6-12 students and just over 5,000 parents with Campus Portal accounts," said Beatty. "We believe the portal is a very valuable tool that enhances parental involvement with their student’s progress throughout the school year."
"[Infinite Campus] met our functional needs and allowed us to implement without a large capital outlay. Infinite Campus was our first choice."
Steve Beatty
Chief Information Officer
Rockwood School District
Smooth Transition
The implementation of Infinite Campus went smoothly for Rockwood.
A corporate environment is prepared to change rapidly to stay competitive. Education is a stable environment and change tends to meet more resistance," said Beatty. "Accurate and timely data conversion was absolutely crucial to the successful district-wide roll out of the product across the district. Infinite Campus had an excellent implementation process and we were able to make a very successful transition."
Infinite Campus provided project management, data conversion and onsite training. The Infinite Campus training strategy is to train specific users within each building so they are able to support the staff. Specialized training was given for each type of user – teacher, administrator, district staff, clerks, front office, nurses, etc. reducing the amount of time staff would normally have spent attending comprehensive training sessions.
"We identified individuals who were pro-technology, had worked on some data management aspects of our previous technology and were excited about getting Infinite Campus," said Beatty. "Following their initial training, they became leaders in training others within the district and strong advocates for the advantages of Infinite Campus."
Cost Effective Solution
In addition to the comprehensive functionality, Rockwood needed to be fiscally responsible. Beatty realized that to support the technology needs of a district the size of Rockwood, it was not out of line to expect to spend close to a million dollars upfront. Beatty discovered that Infinite Campus was a technology solution that did not require a large capital outlay and delivered the lowest total cost of ownership.
"I ran the numbers out over a number of years and the Infinite Campus pricing was attractive for a number of reasons," said Beatty. "With Infinite Campus using a subscription pricing model for the software, services and hosting, costs projected over a period of time (10-15 years) showed Infinite Campus being significantly more cost effective."
Rockwood realized additional cost savings by reducing the amount of time performing administrative tasks – tasks that were simplified or eliminated using Infinite Campus. Rockwood found that the integrated, real-time capabilities of the Infinite Campus system eliminated the need for dual data entry and saved significant staff time. The system helped to streamline time-consuming processes such as student enrollment, scheduling, attendance, and grading so more time and resources could be redirected toward planning and instruction.
Meeting Long-term Needs
Another important consideration in selecting a vendor was Rockwood's desire for a system that would continue to meet their future needs. With its long-term vision to deliver transformational technology for K12, Rockwood could see that Infinite Campus was committed to delivering enhancements and new features to meet future trends in education and technology.
"Infinite Campus met our expectations for product performance and product depth today," said Beatty. "I’m confident they will stay abreast of the ever-changing needs in education and continue to deliver enhancements and features to meet our needs for the future."
Leading the Way in Missouri
Rockwood was the first district in Missouri to use Infinite Campus, but not for long.
"This decision had some implications for us because Missouri state reporting wasn’t done yet. We took a bit of a chance and trusted Infinite Campus," said Beatty. "Infinite Campus worked diligently to provide built-in state reporting capabilities and our experience has been positive."
Within the last year, Beatty has received frequent calls from other districts in the state inquiring about the Infinite Campus.
Beatty shares his experiences and tells these other districts, "Infinite Campus has allowed Rockwood to move to the next level. If I had it to do over, I would select Infinite Campus again."
"Infinite Campus has allowed Rockwood to move to the next level. If I had it to do over, I would select Infinite Campus again."
Steve Beatty
Chief Information Officer
Rockwood School District
