For school systems wanting to keep schools safe, it’s imperative to have the right data available.
Tracking data on students, visitors and staff helps to give administrators the necessary information both in the moment of need and when there are strategies to be developed. Within the school, data has broad applications. It can be used for early student interventions, attendance management, and discipline. Whether at the school level or broadly applied, data is power.
Collecting Data Using Technology
For proper data management, utilizing technology is an absolute must. Paper-based attendance tracking, visitor logging, and disciplinary management are inefficient and create room for human error. The right technology can significantly ease the difficulty and complexity of data collection. When data storage is centralized, it can more effectively be used, accessed and analyzed.School systems should consider integrated technology solutions that provide an array of applications in one package. Imagine using the same system for issuing student and staff smart ID cards, tracking attendance, managing building visitors, restricting door access and monitoring behaviors.
There are considerable advantages to such an approach, including:
- Time savings. With an integrated solution, there’s less clerical time spent creating logs and checking new visitors into a building, or collecting attendance lists & checking attendance at non-school events.
- Better accuracy. With automated tools that can check in students, record attendance and screen visitors, your information is more accurate and actionable, leaving and human error out of the question.
- More teaching time. Teachers spend far too much time on menial, repetitive tasks. Technology platforms that allow for faster completion or automation of that work adds important teaching time back into the day.
- Real-time access. If you need information in the moment, whether in a lockdown situation, to respond to a parent, or during an actual emergency, integrated solutions give you the necessary data when it’s most needed.
An integrated solution has far-reaching impacts on your schools, staff, parents, and students.
Importance of School Safety Solutions
Administrators have several fundamental desires, no matter what the school type or location. They want to keep students, teachers and staff safe. They also want better educational outcomes for their students.
Fulfilling those basic needs makes the need for proper data management even more critical. Collected data can be used to keep parents better informed about their children’s whereabouts. Aggregated data can be used to inform elected officials, school funders, taxpayers, and community members about the school system and its safety measures. Data helps inform the development of school safety plans and strategies. School systems around the country face mounting budgetary pressures. Reduced local, state and federal support combined with contractual and regulatory mandates means school officials need to deploy affordable, cost-saving measures, whenever possible. Adopting an integrated solution helps improve other issues common to school systems. Technology staff could be overwhelmed at times when faced with new technology, but utilizing an all-in-one technology platform, their job could become a lot easier.
When there are multiple systems that are used to collect data, the complexities are compounded. Often these systems are not integrated, meaning it’s difficult and expensive to share information across systems. Multiple solutions mean multiple vendors to interact with, multiple systems to upgrade and maintain, and training and troubleshooting for users. If school systems used integrated systems designed and stored on the cloud, many of these technical issues disappear.
Data and School Safety
Data can be used in many areas to maintain and improve school safety. Here are a few of the possibilities:
Attendance
With attendance management solutions in place, teachers and officials can quickly know who is absent and who is present. This information can be shared with parents who can receive an email or text informing them if their students have checked in to school on time. It also helps administrators understand the school population for that day and assess patterns over time. Attendance tools using smart ID cards can also track entry & re-entry.
In the case of an emergency, attendance information can be shared quickly with emergency personnel.
Visitors
You need to know what type of visitors are on your school campus. Automated solutions can check new visitors in, provide a quick background screening, and record the data, time, location and reason for a visit. With the swipe of a driver’s license, a visitor management system can match their information to a secure registered sex-offender database, flagging possible visitors that are threats.
Here is another possible solution connected to proper data management for school campuses:
Student Behavior
With so many students on campus, teachers and administrators have a difficult task in tracking the behavior of every student that comes across their classroom.
It is necessary to track student data regarding their health, attendance and behavior. With proper data and behavior management in place, teachers are able automate referrals when a student is exhibiting bad behavior to a different department or staff member. Through data, students are monitored as they progress through the school year, providing teachers and stakeholders with a more secure feeling.
Emergencies
When the unthinkable happens, you need data fast. With automated reporting and real-time tracking, officials can give first responders accurate information quickly.
These school technologies can be used to issue location reports and automate lock-downs of doors, while reducing the likelihood of human error.
The ScholarChip Solution
At ScholarChip, we understand the complex pressures and issues school officials face. That’s why our integrated technology service provides proper data management practices for collection and storage of information with little staffing and intuitive user interfaces. With our solutions, school officials will have centralized data that is accessible and actionable. The data can be used for real-time decision-making and reporting. Our cloud-based solution reduces internal labor and maintenance costs and ensures data is accessible from mobile devices.
ScholarChip is an all-in-one, platform solution to help reduce school threats and address the important issues surrounding school safety, and data management. Data from students, faculty, and stakeholder are leveraged to manage school access, attendance, and behavior management through the platform tools to increase safety and promote the campus climate schools are looking for.
Data keeps schools safe. ScholarChip collects the data that drives school safety. To learn more about ScholarChip, contact us today for a 1-on-1 assessment!
