Rich Township Case Study

Rich Township High School District 227 | Olympia Fields, IL

Challenge

Rich Township School District needed to alleviate over-burdened teachers from manual tardy data entry and parental follow up, and allow teachers to concentrate on classroom instruction, rather than student tardiness.

Solution

FACTS AT A GLANCE

Rich Township High School District 227 in Olympia Fields, IL Number of Students: 4,187 at 3 high schools Years with PlascoTrac: one semester Ted Koutavas, Rich Township School District Technology Director 10 years with the district

Rich Township School District extensively researched how to create a new tardy policy.  They wanted to use modern technology to alleviate the burden on teachers for manual tardy data entry, disciplinary enforcement and parental follow up.  They also needed a tool that would integrate seamlessly with their Student Information System (SIS), PowerSchool® Premier, offered by Pearson.

Rich Township chose PlascoTrac because of its ability to integrate with PowerSchool Premier.  The school district needed to restructure their cumbersome tardy policy, and PlascoTrac was able to automate tracking, create consistency and easily share data with the SIS.

Prior to sourcing products, Rich Township realized they had a HUGE tardy problem among their 4,187 students and no mechanism to control, document and enforce disciplinary consequences.  When the bell rang and students arrived to class late, Rich Township relied on teachers to take time to input each tardy into PowerSchool which cuts into valuable teaching time. Rich Township then expected the teachers to follow up with parents at the end of each school day. Inevitably, the tardiness problem wasn’t improving and the manual tracking process was creating a drain on teacher resources and ultimately taking precious instructional time away from all students.

PlascoTrac was fully integrated into the Rich Township’s PowerSchool student information system in January 2009.  PlascoTrac expedites the tardy tracking process—passes are printed immediately, a consequence is assigned and tardy students are back to class much quicker than was ever possible in the past.  The new PlascoTrac system also helps keep parents in the loop. Using data collected by PlascoTrac, Rich Township schools are able to upload information to their parent notification system. Parents now receive automatic notification of their student’s tardy patterns by period.

Rich Township saw instantaneous results within the first week of using PlascoTrac.  “The PlascoTrac system is seamless, transparent and it works perfectly” praises Ted Koutavas, Rich Township School District Technology Director. “Teachers rave at how much easier it is to concentrate on instruction rather than tardies, and Administrators love PlascoTrac because it has reduced the number of tardies on campus; overall, student time spent in the classroom is more beneficial than being in the attendance office.”  The school district’s entire tardy process has become quick, seamless and automated.  As a result, student tardiness has declined and PlascoTrac played a significant role in that achievement.

For Rich Township School District, PlascoTrac has allowed teachers to put the focus back on educating students. PlascoTrac has successfully reduced one of the most distracting behaviors throughout the campuses.  Now that the District has the tardiness issue under control, they plan to set up PlascoTrac to help school administrators track other occurrences such as dress code violations, cell phone use and late buses.