Here’s how it happened.
Alexander County Schools is the public school system for all of Alexander County, North Carolina. They serve 4,500 children and have a staff of 764. The district has 11 schools separated into one early college, one high school, two middle schools, and seven elementary schools. Their goal is to promote the growth and development of all children and families in a warm, loving, and experience-rich environment.
Challenges
Initially, Alexander County Schools was looking for a cost-effective, computerized, and unified way to manage their school facility use program, which is the rental of Alexander County School facilities. For years, paper spreadsheets and then Google calendars and other applications made it an inefficient mess.
All lead to confusion, miscommunication, and scheduling difficulties. They were also looking for better field trip management and athletic transportation requests. Additionally, the maintenance team took too much time traveling to job sites and then back to the office to get more assignments multiple times a day.
Solution
After discovering that FMX had a feature designed for facility rentals, Alexander County Schools found exactly the software it needed. A transportation request feature made field trips and athletic scheduling a breeze. As the exploration of FMX continued, they found extended use of other features for their maintenance and IT departments. FMX made it possible for them to handle the load with their smaller staff all under one software solution and at a price that didn’t break the district’s budget.
Results & benefits
FMX’s robust school event management solution allowed Alexander County Schools to gain additional revenue through facility rentals and a clear-cut way to show and know when a space was occupied for a special event and needed custodial attention. The transportation feature made it easy for teachers and coaches to schedule outings by securing the days required and alerting the busing department to be ready.
The maintenance department’s expanded use of FMX allowed them to stay remote and move from job to job with lightning speed. Teams used their iPads to put in order requests, mark off completed tasks, and find their next assignments. Routing was also created for requests that gave administrators visibility into what the department was doing in their buildings which helped develop better communication at the building level.
The administration used the reporting feature several times when making significant decisions, especially within the technology department. For example, the district hired additional staff after demonstrating the amount of work generated by each of the school district’s tech disciplines.
The IT department has also used FMX to troubleshoot issues. They ask for a picture to be attached to all work requests, which can often diagnose and determine what’s faulty with a piece of equipment without crew members ever going into the field.
