Paperless registration can be first step for schools' document management
In recent years, many school systems across the U.S. have made the judicious decision to start onboarding students for the new academic year with paperless online registration. This helps them keep better track of pertinent data and gives greater ease of use and access to both parents and administrators.
One school system that recently adopted this kind of process and will put it into use for the 2019-20 academic year is Hardin County Schools in Kentucky, according to the Elizabethtown News-Enterprise. Teresa Morgan, superintendent of the school system, said the move was made in part because of parent concerns about how tedious and time-consuming filling out registration paperwork was, particularly for those families with more than one school-aged child.
A broader plan
As such, paperless registration became the public-facing portion of the school district's relatively new document management platform that it uses to retain student information, for everything from sensitive information to their grades, the report said. While some documentation will still have to be filled out on paper and physically submitted to the school system, the amount of work both parents and school officials will have to put into the registration process is now on track to reduce dramatically.
The bigger picture
Once a large and growing number of school systems use digital document management platforms in their daily work, it also becomes easier to share information between them, and that seems to be going into effect in New Hampshire, according to Manchester Ink Link. In the Granite State, the Department of Education recently launched a paperless system for handling teacher, school staff and administrator credentials for the entire state.
This change was made because when it came time to renew such documentation every year, between March and June, the state's Bureau of Credentialing received one large box of paper documents every weekday, which then had to be opened, scanned, shredded and forwarded to the appropriate systems, the report said. By going all-paperless for this process, the amount of time and money saved by administrators is enormous.
Of course, every school district's needs are unique, and administrators would be wise to examine all available options for implementing a comprehensive document management platform that meets all those requirements at a bare minimum.
