Waunakee, Wisconsin
3,500 Students

Waunakee Community School District was searching for a new student information system (SIS) to replace their legacy SASI system. They wanted a company with a proven track record in Wisconsin and a product with advanced core functionality, like special education. In addition, they wanted to integrate systems such as food service, emergency dialing and online payments to improve data management. Waunakee chose Infinite Campus because it offered these features and more.

Challenges
Even before support for their old data management system was terminated, Waunakee realized they needed more from their SIS and had begun looking at other options. Limitations in data management capability were having a negative impact on the efficiency of the district. Lacking an integrated system, Waunakee used site-based data centers that required extensive work
to synchronize.

Student demographic data did not automatically follow from one site to another. For example, special education required a separate data system and they had no food service features.

“Our most significant limitation was working with disparate systems that needed to interoperate with each other,” said Tim Schell, Waunakee Assistant Director of Instruction. “Some data needed to be updated overnight and some information sharing required manual intervention.”

Solution
Waunakee wanted a company with substantial market share in Wisconsin to facilitate collaboration and state reporting. A list of required features was established, which narrowed the field to three vendors. Once demonstrations were made by the prospective service providers, Waunakee sent their entire evaluation team to current user sites for hands-on assessment of prospective systems.

“We saw immediately that Infinite Campus is a high-quality product clearly focused on the K12 SIS market,” said Schell. “We liked the varied capabilities of the product and the fact that Infinite Campus has a strong road map for future innovations.”

Favorable feedback about Infinite Campus came from the administration, special education staff, food service personnel and teachers. “Everything in Infinite Campus looked good to us,” says Schell. “Infinite Campus was the only choice for the special education department. Teachers liked the grade book. Everyone liked the ease of operation and the efficiency of
data organization.”

“We knew we had a lot of work to move into a new SIS, which required a real transition in district resources. Staff training and funding reallocation were considerations in making our decision,” said Schell. “We debated whether to implement the core system and add on the additional components over time or bring together all the components at once. We chose to make the big change. We could generate excitement, complete training and not have future implementations detract from the instructional and administrative innovations available through Infinite Campus.”

Besides the core product, which includes special education, Waunakee selected to fully utilize Campus integration by selecting Campus Messenger with Voice, Campus Food Service, Campus Online Payments and Campus Data Warehouse Export to complete their ideal SIS.

Results
Generating buy-in and excitement among district stakeholders has been a great part of the Waunakee plan for success. “We’ve had our health staff and administrative assistants in and they see how easy it is to complete tasks that had been done manually,” says Schell. “Everyone who has trained on the Infinite Campus system so far has come away impressed. Our staff is looking forward to our future with Infinite Campus.”

District expectations are high and based on solid data. After site visits to other Campus users and conversations with Campus Staff, there is a high degree of excitement for the change. Waunakee has established a network of Infinite Campus users by joining the Dane County User Group. “Every district in the county that used SASI has now chosen Infinite Campus,” said Schell. “We have a lot of high quality discussions and collaboration among Campus users. It’s great to have such a thriving user community down here.”