Every industry—from education to healthcare—has tedious processes that could benefit from automation. This post is the first in a three-part series on accelerating workflows. Here, we’ll discuss how to improve a common education process.
Administrators at K-12 schools are tasked with numerous processes that keep parents, students, and educators informed and on track. One process they commonly manage involves student transfers. While transferring a student from one school to another may seem fairly simple, it comes with a lot of paperwork and requires input from multiple stakeholders.Parents may request a school transfer for their child for a few different reasons:
- The family has moved to a new school zone.
- The child is experiencing extreme hardship at the current school.
- The parent wants the child to attend a school in the district where the parent works.
When parents want their child to transfer from one school to another, they must submit a student transfer request and obtain approval. While the process is relatively painless for the parents, it can be a major headache for the school. In most cases, the transfer request must be reviewed and approved by the current school principal, the requested school principal, and at least one administrative or HR professional from the requested school. This often involves passing paper or PDF documents around via email, which quickly becomes cumbersome and hard to manage.The solution? Automated workflows. Using a multi-step online form, you can eliminate clunky email threads and paper documents to simplify your school transfer process. Formstack’s Workflow forms allow multiple people to seamlessly participate in one process. One Workflow form can travel from person to person, with participants viewing and completing only those portions that are relevant to them. Then, all data submitted throughout the process gets combined into a single record in the database.
Using an automated Workflow form, your student transfer request process could look something like this:
Step 1: Parent/Guardian submits transfer request.
The process starts with a parent or guardian completing the school transfer form. This form asks for basic identifying information for the parents and the student. It typically also requires parents to submit proof of residency documents, medical forms, and current student transcripts—all of which can be uploaded directly to the form.When parents submit the form, they initiate the school transfer request and kick the workflow into motion.
Step 2: Current school principal is notified.
After a parent submits a transfer request, the principal at the child’s current school receives an email notification letting him/her know it’s his/her turn to participate in the process (or, in other words, to fill out a portion of the Workflow form). A link in the email will open the Workflow form, displaying the parents’ submitted information and highlighting the section of the form that now needs to be completed.The principal acknowledges that a parent has requested to withdraw a student from the school and verifies that the student is in good standing and eligible for transfer. This means the student is not undergoing disciplinary actions for poor behavior or attendance issues.The current principal submits the necessary information and completes step 2 of the workflow.
Step 3: Requested school principal is notified.
Just as in step 2, the next participant receives an email notification when the form is ready for him/her. In this case, step 3 is completed by the principal at the requested school. This principal must review all previously submitted information to determine if the student is eligible for transfer. He/she must then note if there is adequate space for a new student (based on school size, classroom capacity, etc.).The principal at the requested school submits the necessary information and completes step 3 of the workflow.
Step 4: Administrator processes application.
As with steps 2 and 3, the next process participant is notified via email that it’s his/her turn to complete a step in the workflow. In this case, an enrollment or HR admin must provide the final approval or denial of the transfer request. This person will be able to view all submitted information to determine if the request can be approved.Once a determination is made, the administrator submits the approval or denial to complete the workflow.
Step 5: Parent/guardian receives approval/denial notification.
The final submission automatically triggers a notification email for the parent/guardian who submitted the initial request. The email provides information on whether the request was approved and offers details on next steps. The parent notification email closes out the school transfer request workflow.
Does your school deal with frequent transfer requests? Would you like to streamline that process and save time for all involved? Check out our Workflow Forms help doc for more detailed information on setting up a Formstack Workflow form. Or click below for an overview of our Workflows add-on.
