Octorara Area School District (PA) Eases Registration for Parents and Staff With Online Student Enrollment

CENTER VALLEY, Pa., July 6, 2017 (Newswire.com) - Through technological advancement, Octorara Area School District is improving and ensuring student and guardian involvement in the education process and in the district’s community. These strides go hand in hand with Octorara's mission. Quality relationships between parents, students, and schools are a source of pride. Relying on a previously dated paper registration process caused heartache with Octorara leading the administration on a search for a way to automate this lengthy process.

Registration Gateway is an award-winning Online Enrollment Solution for K12 school districts across the country. "When people on both sides of a process, like registrars and parents in the registration process, have the same source of grief — they aren't causing the problem. Taking paper out of the equation simultaneously takes out incomplete data, manual data entry for registrars, and cuts down time spent in-office for parents, creating a symbiotic relationship between the two parties. It relieves a lot of stress on both sides," said SRC Founder, Patrick Maher.

"Registration Gateway streamlines the entering of student information into our student information system, PowerSchool. The savings of time for staff allows them to focus on other areas of their jobs and creates better efficiencies."

Cheryl Todd, Registrar

After scouring several online enrollment competitors, the district administration’s decision was ultimately based on "Registration Gateway's superior compatibility with our student information system and the user-friendly software for parents and staff," according to Octorara Area School District Registrar, Cheryl Todd. As the best choice for school staff, the student community and their families, a partnership between Octorara and SRC Solutions, Inc. began.

Today, Octorara School District is almost completely paper-free for their registration process, with an estimated 95 percent of parents completing student enrollment online. They have attested to saving a "tremendous" amount of time, for both parents and staff. They've saved a few pretty pennies as well with the elimination of printing registration forms and supporting documents.

Ms. Todd spoke about their first experience with Registration Gateway in place: "Registration Gateway was used for our kindergarten registration process for the first time this year. The program helped us to streamline our process with parents on the night of registrations. We were able to keep better track of student documents, as they were scanned and kept with the student's forms online. It was a tremendous time saver with the elimination of hand entering all the student data from the registration forms. It also provided better accuracy with the information that was collected."

Staff members are certainly happy their jobs have become easier, but for Octorara it's always about the students and their families first. "With Registration Gateway we are able to coordinate our registration process with the Registrar and the student screenings with our building staff. This allows the parents to take care of everything on a single day instead of missing multiple days of work and having to spend the extra money on travel. We are able to get our students in the classroom sooner," explained Todd.

Todd also explained that with these advancements in efficiency, Octorara school personnel were able to reallocate the time and energy usually reserved for enrollment. Instead, they spent it where it matters most: on the students and in the classroom.

"Registration Gateway streamlines the entering of student information into our student information system, PowerSchool. The savings of time for staff allows them to focus on other areas of their jobs and creates better efficiencies," said Todd.

About SRC Solutions, Inc.

SRC Solutions' flagship product Registration Gateway has had a long and successful partnership with K12 school districts. Being a technology leader is nothing new to SRC Solutions. Going all the way back to 2008, Registration Gateway was one of the first Online Enrollment solutions to offer real-time data integration to Student Information Systems.

Source: SRC Solutions, Inc.