Van Buren School District

"Every Child, Whatever It Takes!"

Profile

Van Buren school district is located in Van Buren, Arkansas and is comprised of 6 elementary, 2 middle, 2 junior highs, and 1 senior high school. Their mission is that “Van Buren School District will serve the Van Buren Community by providing a learning environment that enables students to attain their full potential and that promotes lifelong learning.” They believe that everyone can learn and that education prepares learners for solving real life problems. They strive to provide a safe, nurturing and orderly environment that is conducive to learning and take pride in teaching their students using the latest advances in technology while providing assessments and evaluations to track their students development through out the learning process

Challenge

Schools districts such as Van Buren have recognized the need to implement a more sophisticated system to better manage their professional development activities. Professional development tracking systems are a key component in providing school districts with the necessary tools to effectively monitor staff development activities. With a completely web based system, districts are not only able to save time and money, but they are able to ensure that educators acquire the necessary knowledge and skills aligned with the district’s standards.

Inservice

“A user friendly tool specifically designed to manage and track a school district’s professional development.”

Our Solution

• Customizes Fund Request, Leave Request, Evaluation, Feedback and Expense Reimbursement forms to match a district’s existing forms and processes.
• Allows for faculty and staff to submit requests for hours and credits online and then track their personal professional development portfolio.
• Provides a completely customized workflow that allows a district to define different approval processes for different types of activities, schools, requested dollar amounts and more.
• Includes an online catalog that allows teachers to instantly enroll in district workshops and activities.
• Generates reports for individual schools or for the entire district to track teacher hours and credits, event enrollments, substitute days and associated cost.
• Helps a district ensure that teachers meet professional development requirements.

Effects

The Inservice system allowed the district to easily track their faculty’s professional development hours and credits, expenses and leave requests. Administrators were able to post district inservices, workshops, and other activities in an online catalog for teachers to instantly enroll in. It can be customized on many levels to fit the district's needs and match their existing professional development approval processes. This easy to use solution provided Van Buren with an easy way of improving efficiency and accountability with their professional development process. It had been specifically designed to provide a completely customizable tracking solution for the school district. Van Buren School District would now be able to track their progress towards HQPD, goals, standards, and improvement plans.