How NYCDOE Used SchoolStatus Forms & Flows to Simplify Student Registration

Organization: NYCDOE
Product: SchoolStatus Forms & Flows (formerly Operoo)
Location: New York City

The back-to-school season in NYCDOE used to be a huge headache for administrative staff. Every student was responsible for returning multiple forms, including immunization records, media consent forms, and NYCDOE’s Emergency Contact Card, commonly referred to as the “blue card,” which  needed to be filled out by hand in triplicate.

In an ideal world, every student would have returned with a crisp copy of every required form, but that never happened. Instead, administrative staff had to manually follow up with parents to ensure necessary information was on file. Even after obtaining the proper information for each student, staff still needed to file copies of each form in multiple places.

It was an operational nightmare! 

With NYCDOE inching closer and closer to serving a million students, it became clear that form distribution, collection, follow-up, and processing needed to be digitized. To handle the whole process, the department selected SchoolStatus Forms & Flows.

The Challenge 

With so many students and so many forms, NYCDOE was looking for a more efficient solution for form processing.

Ellen O’Brien, Principal at PS 19 Judith K. Weiss School (Bronx), detailed how inefficient the process used to be: “Our old paper-based system for managing student registration and onboarding involved too many people and too much double-handling of data,” she said. “For example, each classroom teacher had to keep a running list of which students they had updated blue cards from and those who they didn’t. That manual and repetitive process led to another, where staff members from the school office would then verify the information again, before manually inputting the data into ATS.”

For ENL Coordinator at PS 100 Isaac Clason (Bronx), Sandy Larivee, it was more of the same. She detailed, “We were totally paper-based— it was archaic. Every September, we’d send home over 570 physical blue cards; one for every student. The kids would lose their blue cards, we’d chase them, then eventually re-issue a new document for completion.”

The manual method for form distribution and collection had problems beyond just being inefficient, it was also inconsistent with each teacher creating their own process for tracking submissions.

The Solution

In 2021, NYCDOE implemented SchoolStatus Forms & Flows (formerly Operoo) to handle onboarding and registration for thousands of students across the city. The hope was that adopting the platform would allow for a consistent, efficient approach to handling school forms.

Ms. Larivee explains, “The ability to complete all registration and onboarding requirements electronically—from Proof of Address and Housing Questionnaires to Proof of Immunization and Opt-Out Forms—was paramount.” 

Digital Blue Cards Central to a Successful Solution 

With a new digital platform in place, it only made sense to start with the blue cards, a form type that would touch almost every NYCDOE student.

“Blue cards were the first document we started with in [SchoolStatus] because all new students and incoming fifth graders have to submit an updated version,” said Renny Fong, Principal at PS 130 Hernando De Soto (Manhattan). “Digitizing our blue cards made it easier to collect more accurate information in less time, update records without having to request a new card from parents, while ensuring teachers could access their student’s blue cards anywhere, anytime.”

“The fact that I, the Pupil Accounting Secretary, and classroom teachers can instantly access, sort, filter, or print blue cards for all students in our care is really important,” said Lisa Calabrese, Parent Coordinator at PS 9 Naples Street Elementary School (Staten Island). “Whether working from home or in the school building, we can access one reliable source of data straight from our smartphones via the [SchoolStatus Forms & Flows] mobile app.”

Streamlining Processes with Cloud-Based Technology 

Beyond just collecting forms, schools were hopeful that adopting a new platform would help manage all of the disparate workflows around school forms. For example, could SchoolStatus Forms & Flows automate following up with parents who didn’t fill out a needed form?

The answer turned out to be a resounding “Yes!”

For Pamela Rosenberg, Parent Coordinator at PS 107 John W. Kimball (Brooklyn), the new digital system has allowed her to scaffold tasks for the parents she supports. She said, “You can easily go back and forth with parents online and allow them to submit documents one by one at their convenience. Nobody has to come into school. We used to have people cramming into the office for months to fill-in stacks of paper forms on-the-spot. It was a real headache.“ 

Building a Single, Accessible Source of Truth 

While distributing and collecting school forms was almost universally recognized as a pain, everyone also understood the importance. In the event of an emergency, forms needed to be accessible by the right school staff at a moment’s notice.

Over at PS 107, Ms. Rosenberg credits SchoolStatus Forms & Flows with finally giving her campus visibility into all of the information they needed. She detailed, “For the first time, we had one complete 360-view of all information submitted on behalf of each student during registration and onboarding. The ability to centrally collect and analyze data by form type was amazing. Simply put, being able to share a single accessible version of the truth with all authorized personnel—from the classroom teacher to the school nurse—was a game changer, eliminating significant duplication of efforts and information.” 

Dorothy Handler-Velazquez PS 50 (Queens) said the ability to monitor submitted registration and onboarding information in real-time was particularly beneficial. 

“Because we’re now distributing and collecting all data from one web-based platform, we can track returned forms and monitor progress—which I love,” said Ms. Handler-Velazquez. “I can call up specific parents if they look like they’re stuck and help them finish certain forms. I also love the date-stamped submissions for all forms, which keeps us on track and holds our parents to account.”

Finding Additional Value in Smart Groups, Automatic Translation, and Mobile Accessibility  

If the tremendous gains in operational efficiency weren’t enough, schools have also noticed a few additional benefits. For example, SchoolStatus Forms & Flow’s Smart Groups feature has made it easy to tailor communications and requests for information to specific subsets of incoming and returning students. 

“With Smart Groups, it’s easy to target certain types of students during the registration and onboarding process,” said Principal Fong. “We no longer have to send messages to the whole school population, which are irrelevant to many recipients. For example, we can send middle school application forms and information just to our fifth graders. Similarly, we’re able to create Smart Groups for incoming pre-K, Kindergarten, and immigrant families, associating particular forms or communications to each group.” 

“You can get quite granular too, building groups based on any data attributes you have available,” said PS 50’s Ms. Handler-Velazquez. “So, when it came to notifying interested families about our Kindergarten registration process, I separated our current pre-K students and outside applicants into two different groups because our existing children receive preference over new enrollments. It’s just so easy to organize through [SchoolStatus Forms & Flows.]”

Beyond Smart Groups, schools have also found serving their linguistically diverse populations to be easier with automatic translation and mobile accessibility.

“Parents and staff love the convenience of the multi-language capabilities,” said Calabrese. “Combined with the ability to access SchoolStatus from any device, it’s made a big difference to form completion and engagement rates. We’re now using it for all our school documents, not just registration and onboarding.” 

With the implementation of SchoolStatus Forms & Flows, the registration process has gone from crowded school offices to automatically translated forms parents can fill out on any device from anywhere.

The Results

PS 107 John W. Kimball (Brooklyn): 

“We completed what is normally a 3-month process in August alone,” said Ms. Rosenberg. “Thanks to the support of the [SchoolStatus] team, I was able to set up everything, hit ‘enable’, and register our entire pre-K and Kindergarten cohorts. It was amazing.”

PS 100 Isaac Clason and PS 19 Judith K. Weiss School (Bronx):

“Traditionally, registration is a long and drawn-out process that takes a team of 10 people, as we’re copying everything three times,” said Ms. Larivee. “This time, because it was all digitized and automated, it took just two of us to complete registration for 150 new students.

PS 130 Hernando De Soto (Manhattan):

“We’ve saved hundreds of hours of staff time, and I’m sure many more for our parent community,” said Principal Fong. “By digitizing and automating everything through [SchoolStatus Forms & Flows], there’s no more populating information from the DOE into forms by hand, or manually preparing language-specific packets and home language surveys for our ENL families.”

Moving forward: Capitalizing on the efficiency gains of adopting SchoolStatus Forms & Flows

Serving nearly a million students is quite the challenge. Luckily for NYCDOE schools, the challenges associated with form distribution, collection, and filing have been dramatically reduced with the adoption of SchoolStatus Forms & Flows. 

In the new post-paper era, families are getting the right information and can quickly complete necessary forms on the device of their choice. It’s hard for school staff to even imagine the old days when they manually sorted through piles, and piles, of blue cards. 

If you’re looking to revolutionize form collection and workflows in your district, schedule a meeting. We’d love to show you how SchoolStatus Forms & Flows works.