Student transfers within and across school district boundaries result in a continuous shuffle of paper documents and records between a multitude of campus and program offices. Managing student, operational, business, and personnel records in the ever-expanding filing cabinets can present formidable challenges, not to mention the absolute necessity to keep records well-organized for continuous retrieval. Are there stacks of boxes with old records in multiple corners across your school district’s buildings?
In addition to the physical challenges, paper is the most inefficient medium for information retrieval. Managing record retention compliance in a paper environment is daunting given the multiple timelines that apply to records that are clustered according to the functional roles and responsibilities of staff rather than the dates that individual records may be legally destroyed to make room for more records.
It’s time for your school district to consider the available technology solutions to tame the paper tiger. Today’s technology solutions are very cost-effective compared to a labor-intensive records management process, not to mention freeing-up real estate dedicated to expanding storage needs throughout the district’s facilities. Technology solutions also provide improved internal controls over who in the district has authorized access to various groups of records, in addition to off-site storage and elimination of potential damage to records caused by various internal and external environmental factors, including weather events. After deployment of a technology solution, access to records will move at the speed of light.