The Benjamin School runs PK3–12 across three divisions in North Palm Beach, Florida, with over 1,300 students and a Blackbaud SIS that administrators rely on every day. For years, their teachers took attendance, but their records didn't feed into a live, centralized system. At the end of each day, someone had to manually reconcile Blackbaud against what teachers had reported.
Real-time period-by-period visibility into where students are
The school’s goal was simple: get real-time period-by-period visibility into where students are, and have Blackbaud stay accurate throughout the day without manual reconciliation.
The Benjamin School kicked off with Orah in February 2026, starting with a focused pilot for grades 9 through 12. Beginning with the Upper School gave the team the space to configure the Blackbaud integration precisely: mapping attendance codes, enabling daily auto-sync, and building smart tags to handle senior off-campus privileges, where student permissions shift frequently throughout the year.
Building the right foundation before the full rollout
Orah's onboarding team worked alongside the school through weekly calls across February, March, and early April. By April 22, 2026, teacher training was complete and staff members were live on the platform. The Blackbaud two-way sync was active, with attendance records pushing from Orah into Blackbaud and student and schedule data syncing back automatically each day.
The first month was a success as dozens of teachers marked hundreds of active student profiles. Each roll was marked from the Orah mobile app or Chrome extension as class began, feeding into a live dashboard that shows exactly who has permission to be where, by period, throughout the school day.
Thousands of passes and rolls completed, including 2 emergency rolls, in the first 90 days
Staff also created thousands of passes, managing student movement across campus in the same system. The school ran 2 emergency rolls in their first 90 days, verifying the system could account for every student quickly in an unplanned scenario.
"Knowing where our students are at any given moment is the most fundamental thing we do. For too long, we were doing it with a manual process that only one person on our team could run effectively. Orah changed that completely. Period-by-period attendance is now happening in real time, our teachers adopted it through the app almost immediately, and our team has a live dashboard showing exactly who has permission to be where at any point in the day. The two-way sync with Blackbaud means our SIS stays accurate without anyone having to reconcile it manually.
Kevin Jacobsen, Dean of Students, The Benjamin School
As for adoption, Benjamin’s Dean of Students noted that "our teachers adopted it through the app almost immediately." He gave Orah's onboarding experience a 10 out of 10 in April 2026, and added that "it already feels like we've always done it this way, the transition was far smoother than we anticipated."
The team is also exploring RFID-based check-in and check-out, which would add a hardware layer to the existing digital record.
See how Orah gives schools a real-time picture of where every student is, every period.
