From overseeing academics and managing budgets to guiding tech decisions and keeping operations running smoothly, small school administrators are constantly balancing competing priorities, often without the luxury of a large support staff. These competing priorities can unfortunately create organizational silos — especially when it comes to the tech solutions each department uses.
That’s why building a strong, sustainable technology foundation is critical for small schools. If you’re looking for practical strategies to streamline your school’s tech and data management, improve efficiency, and make smarter tech investments — this blog is for you! Whether you’re working with a lean team or navigating limited resources, we’ve created the ultimate small school tech playbook packed with actionable insights and practical steps to help you choose tools and systems that support your school’s long-term growth and success.
Start with the Basics
When taking on any large project, it’s always best to start with the very basics to ensure you have a clear picture of success. Gather the technology stakeholders at your school and identify the person(s) who will lead the charge in streamlining the tech and data solutions at your school. With a leader established and all key staff in one room, set clear, forward-thinking goals around what your tech solutions should and shouldn’t look like. At this initial stage, it’s important to think strategically so that the solutions you choose enhance the experience of the entire community for years to come, not just one department.
Once your goals are established, it’s time to unravel your school’s tech and data webs by performing an audit. If you feel like your school’s tech solutions are a bunch of non-integrated platforms or you spend too much time managing data between platforms, this exercise is a great way to visually represent how your current systems are (or are not!) connected.
While your audit can be as in-depth as needed, this crucial step should always include: a complete list of all platforms and what department uses them, the cost of each platform, timing for contract renewal and/or cancellation, and integrations (how data is shared between platforms). For small schools, utilizing tools like our Software Budgeting Calculator to complete your audit can also be helpful.
Establish a Strong Foundation
Once you’ve performed your data audit, you’re probably coming to terms with the sheer number of platforms your school is using. When reviewing each one, it’s important to establish what platform is your core database and main source of data truth. More than likely, that platform will be your student information system (SIS).
As a small school, it’s essential that the SIS you use supports your overall goals. For example, if you are a faith-based school, does your SIS allow you to capture a student’s religion or parish? Establishing one central system that provides you with the core data needed for school to function will help you immensely as you continue to make tech decisions down the line.
As you evaluate your SIS, you should also consider whether the platform can connect and expand. As your school grows, your tech solutions will too, and you’ll need an SIS that can easily integrate with other products to support your overall goals. Your school is likely using Google or Microsoft 365 and an external LMS — all of which should integrate with your SIS for the best data and community experience.
Lastly, your SIS should be easy to access and use. It’s critical to ensure users can easily navigate the system, so they feel comfortable using it to the best of their ability. Completely web-based platforms provide a simpler access point than an app in most cases, so considering how a user will login and access your SIS is also important.
Connect the Dots
Once you’ve established a strong foundation with your SIS partner, you should begin to identify what other modules are needed at your school. These are often operational rather than academic needs such as your lunch and summer programs, after-school care, billing, and digital tools used by teachers and staff. Be willing to look at third-party options but consider how they will integrate with your SIS. As a small school looking for data efficiency, the more you can bring under one umbrella will leave you with less systems and data to manage — sounds like bliss, doesn’t it?
As you evaluate these solutions, it’s important not to get extraneous at the expense of the core. Getting the right SIS in place for your school is the foundation for success and other platforms or modules can always be added on in the future. Set priorities and select solutions that can potentially solve multiple pain points while supporting the goals established by your key technology stakeholders. Remember, not everything needs to be solved for now!
Understand Your Budget and Timeline
With your school’s data audit complete, you should have a better understanding of what you’re currently spending on software solutions and contractual timeline considerations that need to be taken into account. The financial and staffing implications of hefty technology changes are often difficult for small schools to manage, but a phased approach to implementation can help alleviate some of this stress by strategically allowing you to streamline your tech growth in a way that works for your school.
It’s also important to have conversations with your potential SIS partner to understand their billing terms and how they could potentially disrupt your school’s workflows or implementation plans. While many continue to enforce rigid contracts and siloed pricing, Veracross is one of the only vendors that adopts a phased approach billing in order to:
- Limit the time you’re paying for two systems
- Allow you to properly budget for upcoming spend
- Provide flexibility for each department to implement according to their operational seasonality
For example, with Veracross, you won’t pay until you begin implementation. Plus, each module is billed separately as you implement in order to best align with your school’s seasonality and budget cycle.
Ensure Long-Term Success
A great mindset to embrace throughout this process is to solve for the next 1-3 years and build something that can be sustainable for the next 5-10. Making sure your SIS and integrated solutions are primed for long-term success is key to the growth of your small school. As you begin to picture your school’s new tech structure, make sure your hard work lives on for years to come by:
- Putting guardrails in place: Consider updating your school policies so that the purchase or use of any platforms or apps needs to be approved by a specified person. This is also a way to protect your school from any sort of data breach due to the use of unapproved tech.
- Ensuring top-down support: Leadership level support of your school’s tech solutions can make or break the community perception of them. Make sure that everyone from your Head of School to the PTA president understands and supports the new tech solutions and policies you’ve worked to put in place.
- Enlisting an expert: Whether this is someone on your staff or an external consultant, having someone look at your data from a bird’s eye view, rather than at the departmental level, can be a game changer in creating efficiencies that you’ve never considered.
- Onboarding and training: Parents, students, and staff will all need to be onboarded and trained to use your new system. Make sure you have a plan in place to not only onboard your community but continue to train them as new features and modules are released.
At Veracross, we’ve helped hundreds of schools navigate SIS transitions and understand the approach can look different for everyone — especially small schools. The tips in this playbook are great ways to begin the journey of streamlining your school’s tech with efficient solutions that align with the goals of your school. With the right SIS partner at your core, your small school can soar to new heights.
