Successes - Mishawaka Public Schools
Schools Embarks on E-Information Path Using Westbrook Fortis

Summary
Mishawaka, Indiana, with a population of 46,500, is a medium sized metropolitan area near South Bend, Indiana. Like many similar US school districts, Mishawaka finds itself under continual budget pressures, much of it caused by diminishing State and Federal funding levels, and at the same time coping with the need to maintain and improve services to students and families in the Mishawaka district, including public records requirements imposed by those same State and Federal bodies.

While facing these challenges, the Mishawaka Schools (www.mishawaka.k12.in.us), led by R. Steven Mills, Superintendent and Lloyd Wayne, President of the School Board of Trustees, have put a solid emphasis on adopting technology approaches and internet communications for communications between the school and parents and staff as well as to satisfy administrative needs.

The Business Challenge
Any school system handles a lot of paper. Mishawaka is no exception. The system faced the challenge of a constantly increasing volume of transcripts and administrative information, to the extent that they were constantly adding file cabinets to store student transcripts and accounts payable data.

In an environment where physical space was at a high premium, these paper records were taking up more and more physical space. Hard copies of transcripts are kept in a storage area approximately 1200 feet from the administrative offices. A typical information retrieval request would take a minimum of ten minutes to individually fulfill, that is if an administrator were immediately available. The school system maintains student transcripts that are often requested dating back to the early 1900's. Furthermore, all educational records are now subject to FERPA.

FERPA
FERPA provides privacy protections for student records when held by federally funded educational institutions. Failure to adhere to FERPA rules can result in the loss of federal funds, though that punishment is very rare.

FERPA defines an "education record" as "those records, files, documents, and other materials" that:

• "contain information directly related to a student;"
• "are maintained by an educational agency or institution or by a person acting for such agency or institution."

Students who are at least 18 years of age, or attending post secondary institutions -- or otherwise their parents -- generally have a right to:

• gain access to their education records (obtain copies) within 45 days of a written request;
• seek to amend any information therein considered to be in error;
• control how information in such records is disclosed to other institutions -- in general, such disclosures must be authorized by the student or parent, with some exceptions; and
• complain to the US Department of Education if these rights appear to have been violated.

In general, disclosures to third parties can only be made on the condition that the recipient observes FERPA rules. Recipients can be banned from receiving educational records for five years if they fail to do so.

Disclosure without consent is permitted to "school officials" with "legitimate educational interests"; for compliance with judicial orders and subpoenas; for audit and evaluation of federally-supported education programs; and for other legally-mandated record keeping.

For example, as regards the first, education records may be disclosed without consent to officials of another school at which a student seeks or intends to enroll.

This all means that a better system than paper filing is needed to ensure that a school system complies with FERPA – all in an environment where no funding is really available to deal with these matters.

Access to Public Records Act
Additionally, the Indiana Access to Public Records Act (similar to acts in place in virtually every state) requires school systems (as well as all other public agencies) to make available to the public all documents of school committee meetings.

The act states, “Accordingly, it is the public policy of the state [of Indiana] that all persons are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public officials and employees…”

The Fortis Solution
Mishawaka schools decided to implement a Westbrook’s Fortis document management solution to address these cost, space and regulatory issues.

Currently, records that are managed with Westbrook document management include transcripts, other student records, and accounts payable invoices and payment requests. Future types of “unstructured content” that is planned for addition to the system are board of education meeting minutes, forms and applications, HR records, and insurance-related materials.

There is a dedicated team of two staff who have taken on the role of putting paper documents into the electronic system. Also, they make use of Westbrook’s Microsoft Office plug-in, which allows the storage of electronic files together with digitized paper records.

The digitized records are now quick and easy to find, when a request is made, as well as making it easy to print out or email a copy to fulfill a request.

Benefits
Retrieving of student transcripts based on public requests has seen the biggest impact so far. The record retrieval time has been cut from 10 minutes to a few seconds. Based on a conservative estimate of 1000 requests a year, that amounts to the saving of close to $10,000 in those administrative costs alone in one year.

As soon as the complete body of records has been converted the hard copies will eventually be moved to another, less valuable storage area which is further away, freeing school space for other educational or administrative uses. The freeing of that real estate is invaluable.

Next Steps
According to Mishawaka’s IT administrator Larry Hanks, the system has already had a big positive impact, but there’s even more potential to come. “To be honest, we haven’t come close to hitting this system as hard as it’s capable yet. The plans are to move forward strongly this summer vacation.”

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