We asked Peter from Crystal Springs Uplands School in Hillsborough, California, how his school got started with Informed K12.
Send out one form, do a permission slip - do something simple that you want to do. What will start to happen, as it has here, is that you realize there are all sorts of ways you can use the tool.
How long have you been with Crystal Springs Uplands?
This is my third year at Crystal Springs Uplands School. I had been working on the East Coast for about 25 years and it was a great time in my family’s life for a transition. Now we’re a little bit closer to family and you can’t beat the weather.
Why did you decide to implement electronic forms?
You know, sometimes parents are filling out the forms at the last minute. They’re scrawling away and they put it in the envelope and send it off and they think they’re done and it arrives on campus and you have no idea what’s on that form.
That’s an easy one. There was so much paper leaving our campus, parents filling out pages and pages of forms, having to mail them back to us. Then we’d have to track who had submitted what form, who hadn’t completed the form, and then having them come back in to complete it. When we saw an electronic solution, we jumped at it. The ability to track forms is amazing. The ability to remind parents with just a click of a button – hey, we haven’t gotten your form back – that’s phenomenal. It also eliminates the incomplete forms because they can’t submit the form back to us until it’s complete. Those have just been fantastic things and it’s worked out really well for us. Our parents love the forms because they’re easy to fill out and submit. The other upside of course is that when we get forms back we can actually read them. You know, sometimes parents are filling out the forms at the last minute. They’re scrawling away and they put it in the envelope and send it off and they think they’re done and it arrives on campus and you have no idea what’s on that form. It’s just totally illegible. So the ability to have all that done electronically has been a huge timesaver, much more efficient and easier for us to read.
Did anything surprise you about the change in general?
I was surprised at how easy it was. After we created our first forms and sent them off I expected a little bit of pushback of but we didn’t get any of that. As a matter of fact, we got the exact opposite. The reaction was more of share the love, “This is great, why can’t all the forms be this easy” kind of responses so I was very happy about that. Also we’ve never had forms come back so quickly!
What would you recommend to peers?
I would recommend giving this a try. I know it sounds canned and like a sales pitch but if you’re nervous or unsure about it start small, send out one form, do a permission slip, do something simple that you want to do. What will start to happen, as it has here, is that you realize there are all sorts of ways you can use the tool. We do our summer packets through Informed K12 for re-enrollment. Permission slips are a piece of cake. Also, we have students that graduate, so we were figuring out how can we get information back from parents about diplomas and sure enough we thought of using Informed K12. We just populated the forms with what the students wanted printed on their diplomas and sent the forms off to their parents to approve. Once it was signed off by the parents we just download it all as a CSV and we got exactly what we needed. It’s all been great like that.