Running a charter or non-traditional school often feels like you’re juggling a million things at once—staff wearing multiple hats, numerous edtech systems, paper-heavy processes, and the constant push to do more with less. It’s easy to see how overburdened staff and operational inefficiencies can create challenges in meeting your day-to-day objectives.
That’s where School Pathways steps in. By offering a robust, comprehensive Student Information System (SIS) suite, we help schools streamline operations and reduce unnecessary costs, creating space for growth.
To understand why our solutions are the SIS suite platform of choice for charters and non-traditional schools, it’s helpful to learn about real-world examples of our customers putting our solutions into action.
Digital Document Management
A patchwork of disconnected paper-based student documents is costly, hard to track, and can create security concerns for sensitive student data. That’s why many schools have embraced School Pathways document management features — distribution, eSignatures, collection, and archiving — to simplify and speed up their documentation processes.
Visions in Education partnered with School Pathways to tackle the immense task of processing the over 200,000 documents they collect annually while supporting thousands of students in an online learning environment. Using School Pathways’ SIS and Personalized Learning System (PLS), they established a system to store and access the documents crucial to their Independent Study education model. These included Master Agreements, Work Samples, Caregiver Affidavits, and other compliance-related paperwork. The results spoke for themselves:
- Streamlined Instructional and Staff Records: Moving from a paper-based to a digital platform for these records reduced operational costs and burdens. As a result, the school shifted more focus to students.
- Efficient Documentation: The school more quickly gets key documents signed, approved, and archived.
- Centralized, Accessible Archives: Rather than sifting through paper files in cabinets, the school can now easily access digitally archived documents in School Pathways.
Gorman Learning Charter Network faced a familiar challenge for many non-traditional and charter schools: navigating the inefficiencies of a paper-based enrollment process. With the help of School Pathways, they moved all student enrollment documents to the School Pathways digital archiving system. The shift to digital delivered the following outcomes:
- Increased Organization: Keeping students’ documentation and enrollment ‘paperwork’ in a digital format makes the materials much easier for them to organize and access.
- Enrollment Efficiency: An online enrollment process has proven to be more efficient and accessible for both their staff and families.
- Reduced Costs: This digital solution reduced their printing, storage, and administrative costs.
Many schools start with paper-based processes that they quickly outgrow. Moving to a software-based online solution reduces costs, increases accessibility, and ensures clear communication.
Customized Data Reporting
For charter and non-traditional schools, building reports and analyzing data is a challenge that requires technical resources to create complex queries and reports. Schools must adhere to district and state compliance reporting requirements while managing their own internal data needs. A user-friendly reporting tool is critical to addressing these varied needs.
Several years ago, Visions in Education wanted to convert to an independent charter school. In order to do so, they needed a system to support self-reporting to CALPADS. Additionally, they sought flexibility with custom fields accessible through reports that support the tracking and documentation requirements of their non-classroom-based model. Tania Houchin, Associate Director of Business Systems & Support, highlights why School Pathways’ SIS suite was the clear choice: “We needed a robust Student Information System that would allow us not only to serve students and families but satisfy all of the State’s reporting requirements. [School Pathways’ SIS suite] is designed to support Charter Schools, which made it a much better option for us than the SIS we used as a Dependent Charter under San Juan Unified School District.”
Since implementing the SIS, they’ve seen multiple improvements:
- Robust Reporting: School Pathways’ SIS suite offers robust reporting features and high customization, allowing Visions in Education to track all the data points that matter to them.
- Enhanced Internal Reporting: With School Pathways Create-A-Report tool, Visions has ready access to longitudinal data and they are able to use School Pathways’ SIS to state reporting needs and improve internal reporting.
- Assured Compliance: System reports allow for easy compliance monitoring, leading to fewer errors and compliance issues.
An effective SIS suite must be designed to support the unique requirements of a given school environment. For Gorman Learning Charter Network, their personalized learning model led to complex reporting requirements. With School Pathways’ SIS suite, they were able to confidently operate and complete state and federal reporting, including CALPADS. Executive Director Olivia Duran explains,
“We have utilized School Pathways from the outset because they prioritize understanding and addressing our specific needs. As a non-classroom-based school, we face unique challenges related to courses, grading, state and federal reporting, and scheduling. Unlike other platforms, which primarily cater to traditional brick-and-mortar models, School Pathways provides the flexibility and functionality we require. They not only meet but consistently exceed the evolving demands of charter schools with distinctive requirements.”
Personalized Learning Program Management
Managing an independent study personalized learning program involves numerous complex tasks—such as curriculum planning, participation tracking, and maintaining audit-ready documentation, among others—making it challenging for any school to handle independently.
As Eric Hagen, principal of Western Sierra Charter School says, “We are a personalized learning charter school. Every student has a unique plan. School Pathways allows the flexibility that we need to customize a path for each student.” In fact, they’ve used School Pathways nearly since the inception of their High School Program and have started using the Assignment and Work Records (AWR) and Master Agreements for their elementary program as well.
With these solutions, they’ve managed information across diverse programs. As a result, they have unified their Independent Study program management while ensuring data accuracy in audits and state reporting. They’ve also seen fewer errors in enrollment records and have years of clean Independent Study audits with dates and information cohesively formatted and linked.
Unified Integrations
When non-traditional or charter schools need to scale their systems, they often encounter limitations in integrating the disparate technologies they use.
For schools like Western Sierra Charter School, disconnected systems meant hours of manual work. They turned to School Pathways, which could do the heavy lifting by bringing everything into a single, streamlined platform. From integrated rostering to two-way connections with special education and LMS providers, the school utilizes comprehensive data bridges offered by School Pathways to integrate its SIS with other vendor products.
Likewise, as Visions in Education prepared for growth, they recognized the need to integrate their edtech stack. Manually transferring student information would have been unmanageable. By using School Pathways’ integrated SIS suite and data bridges, they seamlessly connected their LMS product and other systems to streamline instruction and other workflows. In practice, their student enrollment data, family information, and grades are automatically transferred between the systems, effortlessly connecting processes while improving user experiences across their core school technologies.
Long-Term Partnerships
After more than two decades of serving schools of all sizes and types, School Pathways understands that one-size-fits-all solutions rarely deliver the impact schools truly need. For this reason, we guide educators every day in providing lasting, adaptive solutions that evolve with changing educational needs.
At School Pathways, every school is paired with a dedicated Customer Success Manager to help refine and customize solutions and maximize the school’s investment in the platform. Our weekly training and one-on-one meetings are part of the support system that drives our 99% customer retention rate, allowing us to focus on long-term investments in the products, services, and infrastructure our schools rely on.
For example, after going independent in 2017, Visions in Education grew their school from just over 5,000 to more than 7,000 students. Tania Houchin reflects on how this long-lasting relationship supported their growth:
“Since we started our relationship in 2015, we have had an assigned representative with whom we meet regularly to review/update known issues and/or answer questions. In addition to those meetings, we can reach out any time we need help and can count on quick and helpful responses. We truly value and appreciate the relationships we have built over the years with the School Pathways staff.”
While unpredictable costs and disruptive overhauls from short-term contracts can easily derail a school’s plans—long-standing partnerships bring clarity with predictable pricing and loyalty savings.
Meet Present Needs and Build Future Success With School Pathways
Non-traditional and charter schools provide families with responsive, unique ways to meet student needs. These approaches come with unique requirements for schools to maintain student records, manage compliance documentation, and integrate information across multiple digital platforms.
At School Pathways, we understand these unique challenges and offer customized solutions with high-touch, dedicated support. With over 20 years of experience, we’ve helped streamline data and operations for non-traditional instructional models including virtual, hybrid, and blended learning.
Reach out to learn more about how School Pathways can help your school meet its current needs and plan for a successful future.
