Unlocked: Assessment as the Key to Everyday Creativity in the Classroom

[00:01] SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Principal Center Radio, bringing you the best in professional practice.

[00:06] Announcer:

Here's your host, director of the Principal Center and champion of high performance instructional leadership, Justin Bader. Welcome everyone to Principal Center Radio.

[00:15] SPEAKER_01:

I'm your host, Justin Bader, and I'm honored to be joined today by Aaron White. Aaron is CEO and co-founder of Script at scriptapp.com. He's previously served as an IT director of a charter network. And his current focus is on helping schools go paperless and cashless with script.

[00:34] Announcer:

And now, our feature presentation.

[00:37] SPEAKER_01:

So Aaron, welcome to Principal Center Radio. Thank you, thank you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, so you've had a career in education and you've been on the front lines of seeing what schools are dealing with at the systems level. And I'm very interested in speaking with you and learning about how you're helping schools kind of streamline things. Because I know as a teacher, as a principal, and now working to support principals in schools, we deal with a lot of stuff in our school.

[01:04]

So tell us a little bit about Script and kind of where that came from as a solution.

[01:09] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. So what we do at Script is we help schools go paperless and cashless. And we do that by automating a lot of processes and procedures. And so basically how I got there to kind of start the company and stuff is like you're saying, I was an IT director of a multi-campus charter school with a bunch of different schools in all different shapes and sizes. And there was a thing that I noticed that, you know, regardless of the school that you go with, or I was working with is that, you know, we have a lot of administrative burden placed on educators. And I was in a classroom working on some computers, kind of after the class day was over.

[01:42]

And I saw a teacher kind of break down in tears, just super overwhelmed by all the workload and paperwork she had to do. And at that point, that was when I was like, you know, I got to solve this problem. And we got to kind of see what we can do to help schools go paperless and cashless. And that started us on our journey here at script.

[01:58] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I remember that feeling. I was the teacher who was in charge of the whole school field trip. Like for good behavior, we'd take like the whole school of like whole middle school of like, we'd take like four or 500 kids to the movies and under Washington state law, I think, or at least this was our policy. You had to write every single kid a receipt for their like $6 or whatever that they turned in for the movie. Um, And I mean, I would get a stack of those receipt books, the two part forms from the office, and it would just take hours and hours and hours. So looking at that teacher who was really just kind of at the end of a rope as far as paperwork, what were some of the first processes that you sought to automate?

[02:37]

Because I'm excited about this idea of process automation, even though for most people, know process automation is not a very exciting topic i think there's so much potential here to really save time on stuff that like you know what i did not go to college to write receipts you know that was that's not what i got into this profession for and you know i think that's true for all of us is we have things we're passionate about we have work that we know matters but so much of this paperwork stuff is getting in the way so what did you guys tackle first at script That's a great point. And so actually, we started with field trips.

[03:09] SPEAKER_02:

And that was the first thing that we wanted to help automate and streamline. And so we kind of zoomed in on that. And you know, we were seeing that, you know, little Johnny still in like 2017 2018, is still the main transportation method for finances and paperwork. And so like, I can go on Amazon, and I can order something overnight and track it to my house from Alaska, but I can't find a good way to sign a permission slip or do some of that stuff. So we're like, we got to solve this. And so that was the one of the main things that we we started focusing on.

[03:33]

And you made a good point is that, you know, I didn't go to college to do this, you know, like, you're keeping track of all these receipts and stuff. And so we saw that a lot of teachers were acting as bookkeepers more so. And it was a lot of their time was was spent with clipboards, counting money and checking things in and doing things and instead of guiding the experiential learning. And so that's kind of what we focused on first.

[03:54] SPEAKER_01:

I was working with a group of admin assistants recently. We did a full day workshop for admin assistants talking about workflow and kind of streamlining things and making things more electronic. And there was one group that said, oh yeah, we do all of that online now. And everybody just kind of turned and looked at them like, what, that's possible? So what's the process like for a school and for parents now? Let's say I have a field trip coming up and parents need to sign a permission slip and give us $6 or whatever it is for the movie or the pumpkin patch.

[04:22]

How does that work in script?

[04:23] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so it's super easy. So the teacher will go online if they have an activity or a field trip and they would go and they'd submit it through our web application. After they submit it, it's just a simple form. It blasts right out to the administrator. Administrator can review it and see all the information. Once the administrator approves it, it blasts out to all parents with students on that roster.

[04:42]

And so all parents will get an alert. Then the parents can go on with our app. So we have an iOS, we have Android and web, so everyone can participate. They can go online. They can see what needs their attention. Our heart is to be able to empower educators to teach more and manage less.

[04:55]

And so as soon as they can get that technology out of the way and some of those processes,

[05:01] SPEAKER_01:

Parents can actually sign the permission slip on their phone with their finger. Is that right?

[05:07] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. Yeah. And under, under 10 seconds. So it's super, super slick.

[05:09] SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think that's so much more reliable than kid mail because you know, for every document that gets sent home, you know, some of it just kind of goes in a big stack and some of them, you know, never come back. So I love the streamlining of that. But one thing I wanted to point out there is you said you built in an approval process. So this is not just like a form that goes on a website. It starts with the teacher, the teacher or whoever creates the event. And then that goes to an administrator for approval.

[05:33] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's absolutely right. And so we can also notify if there's transportation requests and certain people that need to be, you know, informed along the way as well. So, yeah, it's not just a regular form. That's a lot of information behind it. And it's going to the right people for the right approvals.

[05:48] SPEAKER_01:

and those kind of multiple steps are where this starts to get complex and why, you know, as a business owner for a long time, I've used electronic forms and, you know, things on the website, but within a school district, we have lots of people who need to have a role in this. And I'm glad you mentioned things like transportation and, you know, the different budget aspects. So let's say our transportation department has a particular form that they need us to fill out if we want a bus. How does that kind of factor into this process?

[06:17] SPEAKER_02:

That's a really good question. So we're using the script at all these different schools. And something we notice is schools are all different in shapes and sizes, right? We all know that. So there's different processes and procedures from one school to the next. So what we did is we had it, it was hard coded a certain way.

[06:31]

And we realized that's not going to really work for education. That's not how it works. So now we open it up and we have a workflow builder. So you can upload your own forms online. mark where you need to sign, who's the supervisor, and basically script out the entire process for your school, whether a payment is one step, an approval is a step, a notification, or a form is in step, and we can kind of script it out.

[06:52] SPEAKER_01:

These are processes that usually we have to train new staff on. So we say, okay, welcome to our school. If in October you want to have a field trip to the pumpkin patch, here's what you have to do. And typically the person is only half listening because they're overwhelmed with all the other aspects of a new school. But once it's defined, once the process is kind of built out, It seems like a lot of the potential for steps to get missed or for things to get dropped or for people to be confused just as kind of engineered out of the process.

[07:17] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's right. And the good part is we have line of sight now. Because when you're dealing with a paper process, you don't know what department it's in, what step it's on. No one knows, actually, except for the person that has that piece of paper. And so now when we kind of digitize this, we can kind of take a step back and see, okay, this is where this step is. It's been there for two days.

[07:36]

We need to deal with this. And so it gives you a lot more line of sight, whether you're front office, you're in the administration building or a teacher or anyone in the staff.

[07:44] SPEAKER_01:

And you can see exactly where it is. So if I know the bus didn't get ordered, not because our office manager messed up, but because I forgot to approve it, I can figure that out very clearly, right? Right. Who in a school is typically kind of managing this process? Do you work primarily with office staff, with administrators? Where does it start?

[08:01] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so we originally meet with the administrators and they're the ones that really get the efficiency aspect. And so their job is to make everything as efficient as possible. And then it usually gets delegated down to someone that runs either the activities on campus, kind of like what you were talking about, where you were in charge of the activities. And then we kind of deal with a specific person per department, I guess you would say.

[08:21] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think this is one of those things that, as administrators, it's easy for us to overlook because it's not a new problem. This is a problem that is as old as public schooling, dealing with paperwork, dealing with small amounts of money that large numbers of people have to send in for various things. It's not a new problem, and it's one that we've kind of accepted. And typically, the people who are dealing with that money and that paperwork have learned not to complain. Office staff in schools generally are not complainers. Teachers are not complainers.

[08:52]

And it's easy to tolerate inefficient processes when people are willing to do whatever it takes. And I think that's a good thing that we're willing to do whatever it takes. But if it's allowing us to hold on to just inefficient and outdated processes, it's holding us back. So you have this website, idearubric.com. What do people do there when they go to idearubric.com?

[09:14] SPEAKER_02:

So we just provide just general assessment rubrics or central office or curriculum or human resources rubrics to kind of judge kind of where you guys are at, at your school or at your school district, as far as digitization, right? Are we still on the paper phase? Or are we actually at automation with approvals, and you can kind of go through each step of each of the processes and kind of just see where you're at, because before we didn't know where we were at. and just were really good at paper. And that's what we knew. And so it's now trying to kind of work with some people, just try to move the ball down the court a little bit and just try to always improve and always get better.

[09:49] SPEAKER_01:

Well, and I think when it comes to the process of going paperless or of eliminating some paper, The first generation of that for a lot of schools was scanning. And I feel like scanning is a partial solution, but you're talking about not just saying, okay, this used to be a piece of paper, now it's a PDF file. How does that kind of interact? So let's say I have a paper form that my district currently requires, and we're not just saying, let's scan everything. So where does that kind of go as kind of a next step in automation?

[10:16] SPEAKER_02:

Basically, the idea, Rupert, came from I, meaning individual. So you're on the individual step where all steps are completed by individual contributors. And so the scanning one is where you're talking about the next step, which is digital. So we're taking a PDF document and we're digitizing it. So now it's available online for everybody, but now what do we do with it? We still have to print it out, fill it out, and then hand it in.

[10:35]

And so the next step would be e-files. So to be able to take that document and then fill it out and have it going to a database. So now the answers and the data is accessible by everyone. So we And then the next step after that would be automation. And so how do we automate these steps to happen automatically as they get completed?

[10:53] SPEAKER_01:

I love it. So we go from individual processing, you know, I do everything by hand basically to digital. So ID, individual, digital, to e-file, to automation. Makes a ton of sense. And I think that's exactly how I know the IRS is trying to take things. If you're a business owner and you pay your taxes that way, they're kind of going from e-file, hopefully a little bit closer to automation.

[11:14]

I think we're still kind of at the e-file where you have to go in and hit submit and you can print a copy of your form if you want, but it's certainly not fully automated. But I think it's good for people to know that that is possible and to have kind of a vision for that because In education, I firmly believe that we are doing human work, and because we tend to attract people who like that human side of the work, we tend not to really enjoy thinking about the automation and the process efficiency. And as a result of that, because we don't like thinking about it, we tolerate that inefficiency for years and years and years when better tools are available. So, Aaron, I wonder if we could talk about some other examples of, you know, we've talked about the field trip example and getting a bus for a field trip and taking payments and getting parents to sign permission slips. What are some other ways that people are using script to automate processes in their schools?

[12:04] SPEAKER_02:

Yes. So we see a lot of it in different departments. So whether that's HR department, a lot of internal processes. And so we see schools do, you know, leave forms and a lot of those forms, there's a lot of steps after those processes as well. So it has to go to approval after the form is filled out. Then it has to go back to a supervisor, back to HR, then back to the person.

[12:24]

So all the steps and processes and procedures in each department, we're starting to see schools are starting to automate those out. So it's not only just in the classroom when things have to go to parents, but also internally within the different departments too. So what is interesting, we're taking these paper processes and we're digitizing it. And now we get to see like all these cool new ways that schools are using them, which is really encouraging. One of our schools, do you remember the solar eclipse last year? Yeah, absolutely.

[12:49]

One of our schools who was on script over the weekend, one of the teachers got a box of the glasses that allowed you to look up at the solar eclipse. But it was it was a Saturday and the solar eclipse was happening Monday. And so what happened was this teacher went online, they submitted a request to administration, administration got it over the weekend, approved it, blasted out to all the parents to pay $5 if they want to participate. By Monday morning, they had 90% parents signed up and paid. And so when the kids walked in, they just grabbed their glasses, and they got to participate in the solar eclipse. So by taking this, this paper process and digitizing it, you know, even over the weekend, we can still do a lot of really cool stuff, which was it was really cool to see how that happened.

[13:27] SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I think that kind of stuff happens all the time. When it's more efficient to do something, it's not just that it wastes less of your time. It's that you can actually do things that you wouldn't have been able to do otherwise. You know, it's not about just saving time. It's about being able to fit more in and do things that would have been impossible before. So you said the idea rubric is online and people can download that at idearubric.com.

[13:51]

And where can people find out more about Script if they want to learn more about your service?

[13:55] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, just head over to scriptapp.com. So that's S-C-R-I-P-T-A-P-P.com.

[14:00] SPEAKER_01:

Well, Aaron, thanks so much for joining me on Principal Center Radio. It's been fun to speak with you.

[14:04] SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, no problem. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

[14:06] Announcer:

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