Stacks of Boxes Became Searchable Records at the School District of Manatee County

The School District of Manatee County serves more than 50,000 students across 67 campuses in Florida and employs more than 7,000 staff members and teachers. Because of the district’s size, student records had become a physical problem. Scott Hansen, the district's chief technology officer, said, "The paper records were filling up countless boxes at every campus."

Without a centralized system for storing student records, the district wasted time and resources. Kristi Miller, who supervises property records and records management for the district, said some records sat in fireproof vaults. "We were keeping some records in fireproof vaults, which wasn't free, and to get them you had to drive to where they were and physically sign them out," she said. Hansen said that "thousands of boxes of folders were stored on pallets and industrial shelves in a warehouse."

Earlier attempts to digitize the records didn’t work, and Hansen and Miller wanted a better answer.

Hansen and Miller started by looking at what other districts were doing. The district researched alternatives and watched how other districts used digital records systems. Parchment products offered the affordability and functionality the district needed, and seeing the Parchment system run smoothly in those districts gave the team confidence. Miller said, "We didn't get crazy, but we did take a look at several other districts, and our decision was, to some extent, made for us."

The district began with online records requests. That launch went so well that the team became open to the rest of what Parchment offered.

Hansen and his team set clear procedures so documents were categorized and uploaded into the Parchment system, and each school decided what to scan and what to destroy. "We ask the individual schools to sort through their old documents and decide what needs scanning and what they need to destroy," Hansen said. Once documents are scanned, the district can categorize and search them however it needs.

Some schools had more old records than others, and it took time to get everyone on the same page. After Hansen's team showed how efficient the system was, the whole district bought in.

The district rolled out the process gradually, with the goal of digitizing records at every campus. Hansen scanned records alongside the digitization teams and oversaw the work himself. The district also gave schools hands-on help preparing and scanning records, and regular check-ins built buy-in from staff.

The district also worked with Parchment to make sure the system met its specific needs and that the transition ran smoothly. Miller said, "Parchment was very supportive from the beginning and walked us through the entire process."

Records used to fill boxes, vaults, and a warehouse. Now, staff search instantly in one centralized, secure system. The change has saved the district time, space, and hassle, and staff can spend their time on more strategic work.

Scanned records also change how the district handles paper. "We're no longer keeping the paper-based records on location once they're scanned in. Those records become the authoritative originals," Hansen said.

For schools, the biggest change may be the space. "The newly freed space is really under the control of each school's principal," Hansen said. "I think they're just happy they're not dealing with boxes upon boxes, file cabinets of records, and the filing of the records."