Imagine you're a school district that spends weeks of time printing, stuffing, distributing, tracking, following up on, scanning, and inputting thousands of paper forms required by the state each year. Now imagine that you're able to automate this workflow, saving your district over 100 hours of manual work annually.
Clovis Unified School District made this exact transition when they recently took their annual Notice of Election forms paperless with Informed K12. In the following interview, we spoke to Kris Wise, Human Resources Analyst at Clovis Unified. Kris describes how and why her school district made this shift and the enormous cost and time savings they're experiencing as a result of it.
Thank you for chatting with us today, Kris! To begin, can you describe why Notice of Election forms are important to your district? How do you use them?
Notice of Election forms are annual forms required by the state of California. They vary a bit from school district to school district but every district in the state is required to collect these forms by a specific date each year. Essentially, the forms act as a contract whereby teachers tell us, "Yes, I'll be returning to my position for another fiscal year." So each spring, we send these forms out to personnel. When we receive their responses, we can assess our headcount and hiring needs for the following fiscal year.
Notice of Election forms are annual forms required by the state of California. They vary a bit from school district to school district but every district in the state is required to collect these forms by a specific date each year.
— Kris Wise
So these forms provide a formal way for an employee to tell you whether or not they plan to return to their position the following year?
That's correct. Oftentimes, an employee will have already told us if they have plans to resign, but this contract is one required piece of paperwork that we use to formalize that decision. We won't release an employee or post a job opening until we receive notice from the employee first.
Interestingly, a teacher must be released by their district in order to accept a new job within a different school district. And with the current shortage of teachers in California, some districts won't release their employees if they've formally elected to return the following year.
With a few thousand employees in your district, that sounds like a lot of paperwork to fill out! What was the Notice of Election process like before you automated it? Why did you decide to make the switch to electronic forms?
Before we took these forms paperless, we sent blank Notice of Election paper forms, along with a cover letter from our Superintendent, to each Office Manager in the district. We asked them to have each of their employees complete and return the form by a specific date (approximately two weeks later). It was a cumbersome process. We printed thousands of forms and stuffed them in envelopes with the accompanying cover letter. There were hundreds of envelopes to stuff, about 1750 in total. This took almost an entire morning of staff time, with all hands on deck. After our Office Managers distributed these forms to our employees, and the forms were returned, we scanned the completed forms into our system by hand so that we could save them in each employee's electronic personal file. It was an enormous amount of scanning and a very inefficient process. And this doesn't include the amount of time it took us to track down the employee forms that were missing.
We printed thousands of forms and stuffed them in envelopes with the accompanying cover letter. There were hundreds of envelopes to stuff, about 1750 in total. This took almost an entire morning of staff time, with all hands on deck.
— Kris Wise
That sounds like a hugely time-consuming endeavor! What did it look like to automate this process?
To begin, I compiled a spreadsheet that included data for every employee (name, phone number, email address, etc.). I sent this data, along with .PDF files of the form and cover letter, to our contacts at Informed K12. They helped us upload the form using Informed K12's platform and convert it into a file that we could email to each of our employees. In the process of doing this, we decided we wanted to create five different groups, broken down by our district's five high schools and their accompanying feeder schools. This way, we could assign form managers -- Administrators and HR Specialists -- to oversee the process for their designated areas. So rather than send the forms out to one big group of 1,750 employees, we created subsets by high school area to be monitored by each region's Administrator/HR specialist.
Informed K12 also has a robust tracking feature, so you can see which forms have been completed, and send reminders to individuals whose forms are missing. Another benefit of using Informed K12 is that we can import the completed forms directly into our employee's electronic personnel files so there's no more scanning involved!
Informed K12 also has a robust tracking feature, so you can see which forms have been completed, and send reminders to individuals whose forms are missing. Another benefit of using Informed K12 is that we can import the completed forms directly into our employee’s electronic personnel files so there’s no more scanning involved!
— Kris Wise
No more scanning, huh?
Informed K12 integrates with the personnel management software we use so the forms can be directly uploaded to our employees' files. It's fantastic!
What else happens when the responses come in?
We look at our responses and see who is electing not to return, follow up with them, complete the process of releasing them, and turn our attention to finding their replacement.
What would you say is the best thing about Informed K12? Are you happy with it?
The best thing is probably the ease of getting the forms out. We pulled our employee data, sent everything to Informed K12, and boom! The forms were sent. We saved the cost of printing the forms and the incredible amount of time it previously took us to stuff and scan all of them. It was amazing!
We pulled our employee data, sent everything to Informed K12, and boom! The forms were sent. We saved the cost of printing the forms and the incredible amount of time it previously took us to stuff and scan all of them. It was amazing!
— Kris Wise
Biggest pain points?
Honestly, there haven't been many. I had to train the administrators overseeing the process in each of our districts. But the training is a one-time investment, and overall, we've seen an enormous net positive in terms of time and resources saved.
What would you tell other school districts looking to automate their annual Notice of Election forms?
I would say go ahead and do it! It has been so much easier. I was a little hesitant at first when we decided to move forward with it. I thought, "Oh gosh, what are we getting ourselves into?" But Informed K12 has definitely made the process much simpler for us, allowing us to focus on everything else that the end of the school year entails.
I thought, “Oh gosh, what are we getting ourselves into?” But Informed K12 has definitely made the process much simpler for us, allowing us to focus on everything else that the end of the school year entails.
— Kris Wise
Well there you have it! I'd like to extend a huge thank you to Kris for sharing her time with us. How does the Notice of Election process work in your district? What other cumbersome processes and workflows do you have that you could automate?
Share your insights in the comments section below!
