Palo Alto Unified School District (PAUSD) is ranked among the top school districts in America with over 10,000 students. These high standards extend throughout all of the district’s operations, from enrollment and academics to hiring and IT processes.

“We’re in the heart of Silicon Valley, and with that comes some high expectations,” said Derek Moore, chief technology officer (CTO) at PAUSD. “With the improvements that we’ve made in our technology and processes, we’ve also raised the bar for ourselves.” 

This constant evolution led the district to assess legacy systems and processes, to ensure the highest level of efficiency in operations, with the lowest amount of friction to users. Key to the district’s continuous improvement has been Laserfiche, with which PAUSD replaced a legacy enterprise content management (ECM) system. Laserfiche’s ease of use, adaptability to the district’s Mac OS environment, and advanced integration and automation capabilities were the major differentiators that drove PAUSD’s decision. 

Today, with support from PAUSD’s Laserfiche solution provider ECS Imaging, Laserfiche has become a core component of the district’s tech stack, helping to integrate and orchestrate data and processes across the organization and support the district’s mission to keep the focus on students and student outcomes.

Since implementing Laserfiche, PAUSD has integrated it with core pieces of the district’s technology infrastructure to enable more seamless process and information flow. Key integrations include Infinite Campus, the district’s student information system (SIS), as well as ERP, active directory, and single sign-on integrations.

In addition to connecting formerly disparate sources of information and enabling automation of key workflows, Laserfiche has helped to create a culture of continuous improvement and process automation at the district. 

“Laserfiche has facilitated better communication between departments and between people,” Moore said. Mapping out processes to validate or question each step has strengthened teams’ understanding of how or why actions are taken. “It’s really helped define our organizational processes in a way that I don’t think anyone in the organization understood. We’ve got a whole list of departments and processes that touch Laserfiche, from our student services to human resources, to our business office and our educational services. Laserfiche has been the backbone.”

One critical process that helped to get teams excited about Laserfiche-driven improvements was the Head Injury Protocol. Because head injuries — from minor bumps to serious blows — can have serious health implications, the process of reporting them requires significant documentation and multiple notifications to be distributed internally and externally. 

Transforming the legacy, paper-driven process with a Laserfiche solution meant that documenting these events were now a lot less manual and less time-intensive, but also reported with more accuracy and accountability.

Because of the integration between Laserfiche and Infinite Campus, a staff member can now enter a student number into the Laserfiche form and the necessary information populates the form — parents’ contact information, parents’ email addresses, etc. From there, the staff member simply answers the required questions and submits the form. The principal then approves it, and the information is distributed to the nurse’s office, risk management, legal services, and the child’s parents. 

Transformation of the Head Injury Protocol inspired various teams to realize the power of Laserfiche solutions. “It’s a really fun place to be,” Moore said. “Our users are bringing ideas to us, and we’re able to evaluate and prioritize projects. We’re thinking about our pain points as an organization and how we can create Laserfiche Forms processes to solve them.”

Building on the initial success, PAUSD began creating more standardization around other processes that require the alignment of multiple departments, approvals and systems. 

“Our entire organization’s staff is very competent and wants to be empowered to do the job themselves,” Moore said. “That’s where Laserfiche fits in. We help by building small pieces for them or helping to standardize a process. Laserfiche empowers them to complete the tasks that they’re charged with without requiring a lot of tech team intervention.” 

The updated, expedited process extends to the IT team, which is now automatically notified when people are hired so that accounts and access can be set up immediately. “We want to make the new employee feel welcome,” Moore explained. “We’re onboarding them with a good experience and making sure they have everything they need so they’re ready to go on day one.”

“We can say at this point that all of our active files are electronic,” Moore said. “Some information comes in as paper if it starts in another district, for instance, or it may be a doctor’s note that needs to be scanned in. But it’s scanned in via a Laserfiche form.” 

This digital-first approach is also evident in the processes that collect information externally, as in PAUSD’s Choice Programs process. PAUSD Choice Programs offer parents and students options beyond their assigned neighborhood school, providing diverse learning environments for different interests and needs. 

The district enables parents to fill out a public Laserfiche form, which is routed to staff members who validate the information through an integration with the SIS. The workflow also pulls additional data into the form that needs to be evaluated.

“These lookups save reviewers a lot of time, because instead of clicking to five different pages where the information exists, it’s all there on that one page,” said Hung. Additionally, the Laserfiche form enables the district to collect accurate data from the outset, eliminating the time-consuming data cleaning that used to be inevitable in the legacy process. “We also created a notification process with Laserfiche, to make sure that parents and students receive the right notifications for the specific lottery programs they are being accepted to. Our staff can just click a button that sends out notifications as part of the business process; it’s made it a lot less stressful.”

The IT team continues to innovate the organization’s many processes and procedures that make up PAUSD’s operations. One of the best parts of using Laserfiche for this innovation, the team says, is that they know they are not alone.  

“We go to the community events to connect with other Laserfiche users, and we communicate about what challenges they’ve run into, or what new processes they are trying,” Hung added. “We learn from them, and we can pass on what we’re doing, too.” 

As the district grows, the technology team is confident in its ability to support the student-centric mission of the organization. Through digital solutions, PAUSD can prioritize the programs and budget items that are going to have a positive impact on student outcomes.  

Coppell Independent School District (ISD) is a public school system just outside the Dallas/Fort Worth area in northern Texas, with 1,600 staff members serving over 13,000 students across 18 schools. With a 99% high school graduation rate and 97% overall score in its 2022 State Academic Accountability Rating, Coppell ISD prides itself on supporting students through all avenues available, from the quality of teachers to innovative technology solutions that drive administrative innovation.

As part of its mission to serve students and administrators, Coppell ISD partnered with Laserfiche to transform key administrative processes and improve document management practices throughout the district.

Coppell ISD consulted with a local Laserfiche solution provider and decided to bring on Laserfiche as an enterprise content management (ECM) technology solution, with the initial goal of modernizing and automating the district’s human resources department. All staff records had previously been stored in physical files and manual processes created a major risk of user error. District administrators chose Laserfiche as a solution because they knew once the HR automation project was complete, they could use the software for many additional projects across departments. “Once you understand the capabilities of Laserfiche, you can utilize it for much more than the original use case,” said Angela Goerner, director of enterprise content management for Coppell ISD.

Once the HR department automated crucial processes like annual contracts and handbook agreements, Goerner and Coordinator of Student Information Systems Carol Freese decided to automate another manual process that historically created an administrative bottleneck: the online student enrollment system.

Historically, the student enrollment process was a convoluted series of Google Forms, manual information verification and an enrollment software that required parents to keep track of a username and password — and resort to calling Coppell ISD administrators when they forgot that information. Administrators at different Coppell ISD campuses all had their own processes for gathering documentation, informing parents and supporting students. “Administrators were either on the phone or back-and-forth emailing, and they were required to create their own organization system. It slowed everything down, and opened the door for mistakes,” said Goerner.

Coppell ISD also had to rely on an external administrator to customize their previous digital enrollment system, and didn’t have the option to develop digital cumulative files for their students. Administrators were responsible for managing cumbersome manual processes, like hunting down proof of residency and manually transferring documents from the enrollment system to their student information system (SIS), eSchoolPlus.

To eliminate these pain points for parents and administrators, Goerner standardized and automated the student enrollment process in Laserfiche. The process was reduced to three main steps, with all the manual work either eliminated or reduced to quick approvals in the Laserfiche system. “We were able to customize exactly what we wanted to get from parents and make the application work for the parent as well as the administrators,” said Goerner.

Historically, the student enrollment process took a week or longer. Now, when Coppell ISD gets an enrollment request from a parent, they can usually get the student enrolled and in school the next day.

Transitioning the student enrollment process into Laserfiche had the ancillary benefit of kickstarting the development of digital cumulative folders for all of Coppell ISD’s more than 13,000 students.

Previously, Coppell ISD kept physical files for each student — ranging in size from about 40 pages on average up to 300 pages — which office administrators had to manually update. Administrators had to file every report card, every test score and every student-related incident report into these physical student files.

With Laserfiche, when a student is accepted to attend a Coppell ISD school, all the documents from their application are automatically added to a new digital cumulative file. Grades and test scores are automatically added to the cumulative files each semester. If a student needs to transfer between schools in the district, there’s no need to transport physical files, significantly reducing the likelihood that crucial documentation will be lost or left behind.

Coppell ISD was also able to directly integrate Laserfiche with its SIS system, PowerSchool eSchoolPlus. Prior to launching the Laserfiche enrollment process, Freese had to manually launch a transfer process between the enrollment system and eSchoolPlus, which opened up the door to errors.

“Errors would occur, and I would have to track down which files didn’t transfer properly and why they didn’t transfer. I would also have to go in and fix data. That was enormously frustrating,” said Freese.

Now, when an application receives final approval from an administrator, a Laserfiche workflow and integration with eSchoolPlus creates a new student record, accessible to administrators within about 20 seconds.

“Laserfiche has allowed us to automate our very complex enrollment process, saving time and ensuring all the appropriate people are notified automatically and all the appropriate documentation is collected,” said Freese.

Coppell ISD’s mission is to “educate the whole child,” supporting their students not just academically but in terms of their emotional well-being and safety. With this mission in mind, Goerner’s next priority for digital transformation was a series of processes related to student threat assessments, bullying investigation and Title IX protocols.

“The threat assessment and bullying investigation process is vital for student, staff and district protection,” said Goerner. “Our students’ safety is always important, but the proper collection of documentation is just as important for other districts and state reporting purposes.”

Previously, Coppell ISD captured the threat assessment information in a Google Form, which did not allow for an accurate information flow throughout the whole process. Notifications to campus and district administrative staff were sent out manually, which would often slow down completion time or create gaps where crucial staff members were left out of notification process. In instances of bullying, the manual threat assessment form had to be completed, as well as a separate paper-based bullying investigation process.

Goerner developed a Laserfiche workflow that includes:

Digitizing these processes has allowed Coppell ISD to combine the requirements of the threat assessment form within the bullying investigation form, simplifying the experience for staff members. Students who require interventions now automatically get a support plan put in place within the bullying investigation form, which reduces the amount of paperwork and process steps significantly.

 “Counselors and administrators are excited because it’s going to save so much time and eliminate so much manual tracking of support plans.” said Goerner.

Upon deploying the threat assessment process, turnaround time on completion of a safety and support plan for students has significantly dropped, from about a workweek to as short as one day. Campus staff that are required to provide interventions are notified immediately, and the digital process is a key accountability tool to ensure timeliness in implementing interventions for students. Taking advantage of Laserfiche’s wide array of tools, threat assessment/bullying intervention documentation is automatically added to students’ cumulative folders, easily redacted in the event of an open records request and automatically transferred to the correct office for students who change schools. Via the integration, the new threat assessment process writes directly to eSchoolPlus for data tracking and state reporting as students transfer between Texas school districts.