Industry: Public School District
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Employees: 816
Student Population: 7,000
Tyler Client Since: 1990
Tyler Products: Tyler SIS™, SISFin™, Tyler Pulse™
Key Challenges
Lindbergh School District director of technology, Mariano Marin-Gomez, remembers just why his district sought a student information system to replace their previous platform: it was no longer meeting their needs or the needs of their students. He described how "so many of our processes had to be done manually, everything from attendance to tracking student grades year-to-year. It left a lot of room for error." Lindbergh administrators knew they needed a system that would give them the flexibility and customization their previous system lacked. They also prioritized automation, as their previous system required hours of manual entry and analysis. After a comparative assessment of the options on the market, administrators decided Tyler SIS was the best fit for Lindbergh. In all the years since implementing in 1990, they still feel that they made the right choice.
Some of the features we wanted were not available on other platforms. Over the years, what has kept us using Tyler SIS is the flexibility, that we are able to make changes that are suited to our needs. It gets continually improved, and that makes it feel almost like a personalized product. It's a good return on investment because we don't have to spend a lot of money on different products that don't do half of what Tyler SIS does."
Mariano Marin
Director of Technology, Lindbergh School District
Solution
Over the years, Tyler SIS has evolved and grown along with Lindbergh School District. The staff dove into the system, always finding opportunities to update and automate their data reporting. For example, they were pleased to see how seamlessly Tyler SIS integrated with Clever™ and SchoolMessenger™, two software programs the district was already using. This saved the district from having to seek out software patches to force disparate programs to communicate.
Lindbergh also implemented Tyler SIS Online Registration™ and found that it greatly improved the interactions between administrators, teachers, and parents. Online Registration has proven to be a huge time-saver for parents, who no longer need to hand-write forms and fill out multiple documents for families with more than one student, and for secretaries, who no longer have to read and enter data from duplicative, hand-written forms. This increased data accuracy also relieves potential parent frustration. "We have been able to greatly improve our registration process with Tyler SIS, both for our secretaries and our parents," says Michelle McRoy, district SIS and core data specialist. "Our parents love being able to come to the online portal at their leisure and know their forms are submitted and the information is accurate."
Similarly, the district became able to note and track ELL students and homes where a language other than English is spoken within the Tyler SIS database. This helped identify and connect non-English speaking parents with appropriate ELL teachers to answer their questions quickly and without struggle.
Lindbergh School District also implemented Tyler Pulse, an advanced analytics tool which enhances the Tyler SIS solution. Their administrators now confidently use these two systems in tandem to create end-of-year student reports without having to access students' files one by one to fetch individual data points.
Results
Since the district selected Tyler SIS, its simple reporting and automation have saved the staff countless hours of manual data entry and reporting time, giving users the ability to access and analyze information simply and efficiently. The district also found that training new users each year was not a burden on existing staff. Sandy Woodfin, information systems specialist, recalls learning to use Tyler SIS when she started at Lindbergh School District, stating, "I have to say, Tyler SIS is very intuitive. It's user-friendly. Even if you're not very comfortable with a SIS program or don't know exactly what you're looking for, I feel like this system is easy to navigate."
Over the decades, district staff has come to value the breadth of features they have found in Tyler's system, due in part to Tyler's evergreen philosophy of continual software updates without the purchase of additional licenses. "From tracking student medical visits with nurses, to school athletics, to early-childhood programs, to student lunches, everyday something is new with [this solution]," says McRoy. "We're always finding new uses for Tyler SIS."
