Meet the Client
Idaho Falls School District 91 is the seventh largest district in Idaho. The district serves more than 10,000 students across 18 schools. Known for their commitment to technology-enabled learning environments, they wanted their administrative operations to match the innovation happening in their classrooms. They needed a better way to handle everything from student transcripts to employee evaluations.
Daily Detour: Filing cabinets, snail mail, and two-week wait times
Picture this: a student needs physician approval for IEP services. The case manager fills out a paper form. The form goes into the internal mail system (staff called it “The Turtle” for good reason). It makes the rounds through multiple approval signatures. Two weeks later, someone manually enters the information into the IEP system. Then the form gets filed in a cabinet somewhere.
About our Client
CLIENT NAME:
POPULATION:
19 School sites with est. 10,000 students
SOLUTIONS:
The district processed about 1,900 of these requests each year. That’s a lot of time spent shuffling paper instead of supporting students. Human resources faced similar bottlenecks. With over 2,000 employees submitting everything from mileage reimbursements to personnel action requests on paper, the HR team spent more time chasing down signatures than actually helping people. Transcript requests sat in filing cabinets where finding anything required knowing exactly where to look. The manual processes weren’t just slow. They pulled talented staff away from the work that actually mattered.
The Solution: Digital forms meet intelligent workflow
Idaho Falls School District 91 partnered with MCCi to implement Laserfiche Forms and Workflow across their operations. The team started with transcript management to prove the concept worked. Once administrators saw how easy it was to search and retrieve documents, they wanted more.
The district built out 27 automated business processes. Here’s how a few of them work now:
IEP Student Services: Case managers open an electronic form that auto-populates student data from PowerSchool. They submit the request with a few clicks. Workflow routes it to the physician for digital signature approval. The system files everything automatically in the student’s folder and sends a copy to IEP for archiving. What took two weeks now takes a few days.
Mileage Reimbursements: Staff select their destination from a dropdown menu. The system calculates total miles and applies the current reimbursement rate. No calculator needed. No map required. Just a quick digital signature and the request goes straight to the supervisor and finance department for approval.
Purchase Card Requests: The finance department issues P-cards to select employees. The digital form captures cardholder information and policy acknowledgment. After submission, the system schedules an automatic email to the employee in five days with their card status. Staff can check their request status anytime without calling HR.
Personnel Actions: Schedule changes, salary adjustments, promotions, and new hires all flow through a single online form. Accessible from desktop or mobile, the form notifies supervisors and payroll automatically. No more stacks of paper to process each week.
The district integrated Laserfiche with their existing systems like PowerSchool and Skyward. Forms auto-populate employee and student data to save time and reduce errors. Staff log into the district intranet and access the forms they need. Digital signatures happen with a mouse click or touchscreen tap.
The Results: From weeks to days, from paper to digital
Twenty-seven business processes now run digitally instead of on paper. The list includes IEP student services, transcript requests, incident management, workers comp reports, equipment checkout, employee evaluations, transfer notifications, and retirement notices. Each one saves time and eliminates manual filing.
Response times dropped from weeks to days for critical processes. Staff can track request status in real time instead of wondering where their paperwork went. Search functionality means anyone can find what they need in seconds rather than digging through filing cabinets.
Without Laserfiche Forms and Workflow, the District’s business processes were very time consuming on the employees and consistency was difficult. As part of their implementation plan, they started with three test schools before deploying to all schools. The school principals are encouraged by the new processes to standardize forms, capture accurate information and the advanced features to search for documents.
The district continues to expand their Laserfiche implementation. Finance, operations, and maintenance departments are planning additional automation for the next school year. What started as a way to organize old transcripts became a district-wide efficiency engine.