Transcript

This transcript was automatically generated and may not be fully accurate.

Warren Griffiths [0:00]: Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. My name is Warren. I'm an account executive here at Orah. And today we're going to be joined by Alex Gallant, who's the Director of Student Affairs for grades 5 to 12 at Dallas International School. Together we're going to discuss how Dallas International School uses Orah day-to-day, what has changed since adopting it, and what Alex would tell others, especially other Texas schools that are considering Orah as a school safety platform.

Please share your questions as we go through, and we will get to them at the Q&A at the end. So here's a quick look at what we're going to cover today. I'll start with a short overview of Orah, because I know some people may be joining us that don't know what Orah is. And then we'll meet Alex, and we'll walk through what life looked like before Orah, how the rollout went, and how Dallas International School uses Orah day-to-day. And again, we'll wrap up with lessons learned and advice, and then open it up to your questions. So please, anytime, put them in the Q&A and we will get to your questions.

So for those coming in fresh, let's start a little bit with what Orah is. Orah is a student safety and school operations platform that gives staff a single, real-time view of where every student is and who's on campus at any given moment. At its core is location awareness. As students move through the day from homeroom to different classes to buses, excursions, sports, for your international schools that also have a boarding component, that as well. And Orah keeps an up-to-date picture of where students are expected to be and where they have been checked in, so staff always have an accurate view rather than relying on memory or scattered spreadsheets.

And that visibility feeds directly into attendance management. Instead of treating attendance as a once-a-day roll call, Orah lets schools take attendance continuously across the day, per period, per activity, per bus, and then automatically flags any discrepancies, like a student marked present in first period and then marked absent in the second period. This turns attendance from a compliance chore into an early warning system for whether a student is actually where they should be.

It also works the way your school already does. Teachers can take roll through a browser extension or through a mobile app. Students can check in at a kiosk. You can use RFID, QR codes, and barcodes that are on a student card or some sort of wearable RFID device, or a simple name search, and it all flows right to that one record. Orah also plugs right into your student information system in a two-way sync, whether that's Blackbaud, Veracross, FACTS, PowerSchool, or ISAMS. Your data comes in automatically and attendance writes back, so there's no double entry.

And if you think about every place a student can be that isn't their scheduled class, whether that's a field trip, a sports practice, the library, a nurse visit, senior privilege, an after-school pickup, or an off-campus activity, every one of these could be a blind spot in a school setup. Orah captures all of these scenarios and then maps them back to that single student record. So no matter where a student is or what they're doing, you have one accurate, up-to-date answer to the question: where are they right now? All right, and with that, I'm going to hand it over to Alex.

Alex and I worked together when Dallas International School were evaluating Orah earlier this year. So I'm glad to be on the call with him. Alex, can you do a quick introduction of yourself, your role, and maybe a little bit of background about Dallas International School?

Alex Gallant [4:26]: Yeah, for sure. Thanks, Warren. Thanks, everybody. So yeah, like Warren said, I'm Alex Gallant. I'm the Director of Student Affairs at Dallas International School. I've been here for a couple years now, and we were happy to roll out Orah this past summer. Part of that reason is we have a pretty unique campus setup here, and it's something that's really cool about our school, is that we go all the way from three years old all the way up to senior year of high school at 18 years old.

So we have two different locations. We have a lot of moving parts across about a 5 to 10-mile span between our two campuses. So there's a lot of great things going on, but a lot of moving pieces as well. And another unique thing is that we're a bilingual program, so we've got a French program. We've got an IB or English track program. So we've got a pretty dynamic group here. It's never a dull moment. But yeah, we're excited to be here and talk a little bit about Orah.

Warren Griffiths [5:32]: That's amazing, Alex. So for everyone that's on this call, how did Dallas International build a picture of where your students were before the adoption of Orah? Can you explain what that looked like?

Alex Gallant [5:38]: Yes, yeah. So prior to adopting Orah, for lack of a better phrase, I'd say it's just a lot of manual entry going on, whether it was with attendance or entering information into our SIS, which is Blackbaud. As far as if kids are going on field trips or if they have an after-school game for their soccer team, for example, that all had to be inputted manually one by one into the system by one of my colleagues who put in a lot of hours over the past couple years doing that, just to ensure that not only are we keeping accurate data, which we still were able to do, but at the same time knowing that was just one component of our team and that there were a lot of different components of things we had to do on a day-to-day basis. The time spent doing that manually just wasn't exactly feasible long term.

Additionally, prior to Orah, as far as the location awareness component, that was something that frankly just wasn't present. It was something that we didn't really have a good system for, just both student movement in the building, like creating a restroom pass or creating a pass to go see the nurse or to go see the counselor, or having a senior off-campus privilege, because our seniors can go off campus for lunch. All those things at best were written by hand on a sign-out list at the front desk, or the teacher wrote a handwritten pass real quick for someone to use the restroom.

So at any given moment, a couple people knew where the kids were, but not everyone knew where the students were, whether administration or teachers or our security staff. Not having that database electronically and in an automated fashion made things real challenging. And especially trying to emphasize that security component, that's something we wanted to look at. What are some solutions out there to make this not only a time saver from an automation perspective, but also just having that accurate data at our fingertips and not having to go searching for it. So that was, I'd say, our real inspiration to get things rolling for a solution.

Warren Griffiths [7:48]: Amazing, Alex. Yeah, I remember when I was working with the team, and what I remember were all of the manual processes and just not a really clear understanding of student location, and that was paramount for the school because it all ties into security and safety at the end of the day. Alex, so when you and the team decided that this was the path forward and you wanted to partner with Orah to make these operational issues go away, what did the rollout to the staff look like, and how did you prepare your faculty and staff for the adoption of Orah?

Alex Gallant [8:26]: Sure, yeah. So we joined on and partnered up with the Orah team right at the end of the last academic year, back in June. So we knew we were going to have at least a couple months, not only for the admin team to get the real nuts and bolts rolling prior to the faculty and teaching staff joining up in mid-August.

But not only did we hold in-service trainings with the staff, what was real helpful was having Ram, who was our onboarding specialist from Orah, for that not only entry in June and getting everything set up on the back end, but then being able to fine-tune and tweak our systems as far as what's unique to our school in early August. So when the kids came back in late August, we were able to just hit the ground running from day one and using the system.

I think what made the rollout particularly easy, both from an efficiency perspective, but also from a teacher and staff buy-in perspective, is that Orah just automatically synced and integrated with our Blackbaud system. That's something where faculty and staff were already comfortable with that SIS system. It wasn't something that we all had to learn from day one, this brand-new program where we had to have completely different logins or a completely different interface, and then switch the info back and forth. So knowing that it was going to be a time saver from that synchronization with the SIS, I think helped that teacher buy-in at the start.

And then just knowing that we can make those tweaks and have them automatically integrated into both the SIS and Orah made things pretty simple overall. And we have a pretty unique setup, just knowing we have that French track schedule, we have the IB and English track schedule. So our schedules are very intricate as far as the actual coursework that the students take. So knowing that as we're inputting those items into our SIS, that those were just going to automatically then synchronize with the schedules and with the roll checks and attendance and location in Orah, I think took that pressure off that might have been there otherwise. Like, "Oh, we're adopting this new system. Do we have the time to do it?" I think that alleviated that concern, knowing that it was just that auto-sync and integration between the two platforms.

Warren Griffiths [10:50]: That's great. Thanks, Alex. And I know there's a lot of stress when a new piece of technology is being adopted, and it's great to hear that it was fairly minimal, and it was tied into the processes that they're already using day to day. That's great. So speaking of day-to-day, we've talked a little bit about the issues you had at the school and why Orah was a good partner, and what the rollout looked like. So as of today, what does a typical school day now look like now that you've adopted and are using Orah on a daily basis?

Alex Gallant [11:22]: Yeah. So for just the regular day-to-day, as we were taking attendance in the past, but now our staff and our teachers, from period one all the way through the end of the day, they take attendance in the Orah platform. And that's something that they can do either via their Chrome extension or via their mobile app or via the web platform. And that's something that it automatically works with our school email account, so it's not something they have to log into that's totally separate from what they're working on, either grade book-wise or student records-wise or whatnot. All they need is just that little extension.

So the teachers take attendance just like they normally would, and say in second period a student isn't feeling well and they have to go to the health center on our second floor to see the nurse. So what would happen at that time is the teacher would be notified of that by the student, and the teacher would use Orah, the passes feature in Orah, and they would create a pass for that student to go to the health center and to see the nurse. And not only would the teacher be aware that's occurring, but that would show up in the location map on Orah for everyone to see and be aware that this student is in transit to the health center.

And then using that example, if they arrive at the health center, the student would then check in at the kiosk that we have at a few different locations throughout campus that are frequented by students on passes. They would check in with the nurse. They would check in at the kiosk at that station. It would, for instance, automatically update their location to being there instead of in the classroom. And that kind of awareness component is present not just in the example I used, but for any of those similar examples throughout the school day and throughout the year so far.

For example, our kiosks are set up at the health center, at the front desk, the library, the counselor, the college counselor, just areas that students might be present in throughout the day that aren't the normal classroom or the lunchroom or things like that. So that's the attendance taking and location component.

We don't have the RFIDs yet. That might be in the budget in the future as far as just our personal school adoption, but we know that's certainly a component that we're looking into as well. But being able to have that location awareness and getting the teachers just in that routine, I think has been a big win for everyone. Knowing that it is a new piece of technology, it's been pretty seamless overall.

Another component that we've had success with on the day-to-day, I think which is our biggest success so far, is getting that parent buy-in with reporting absences in the Orah for Families app. That's something where in the past what would have happened is if a student was going to be absent, the parent, mom or dad, would email my colleague, our attendance manager, "Hey, so and so is going to be absent. Can you mark them absent for all of their classes in our SIS?" And that would have to be done one by one manually for every single email that she received, and it would be stuck in all the hundreds of emails she gets. So it was a little bit clunky in that regard.

But now, what's been a real success is parents have been really comfortable requesting those absences in the Families app. My colleague or I just real quickly go in at the start of the day, look at those requests, and approve or update with just one click of a button. And what's nice about that is as we approve those passes, the attendance would automatically update throughout the day in Orah for those students. So when fifth period, for example, rolls around, say at two o'clock, and the English teacher is taking attendance, they'll already see that if Johnny has a pass, Johnny's already marked as having a pass in their roll. So they don't have to wonder, "Oh, is he actually here? Should I be looking for him? I haven't heard anything." So having that automatically updated and synchronized in the system just helps, I think, overall with our staff knowledge as well, feeling like they're not missing anything and that they are consistently in the loop as well, which is safety and security with that too.

So that's how we use it overall in the day-to-day. And it's been a big win, I would say, just to have that location awareness, but also that huge time saver with just the attendance and roll checks and passes and things like that for absences. So we're not having to sift through emails or worry that we're missing something as far as if something got lost in the grapevine or whatever.

Warren Griffiths [16:28]: Yeah, it's great to hear. And I remember when we first started chatting, Alex, as most educators are, they're spinning a lot of plates, and I felt like you and the attendance team were spinning all the plates to try and do what you need to do. So obviously we're talking about student wellness, safety, location. But on an efficiency standpoint, if you could put a number on how much time you feel you're saving a day, a week, a month, what does that look like for efficiency, if you could quantify it?

Alex Gallant [16:50]: I would say I met with my colleague a couple weeks back about this. I would say for her, because she was doing a lot of this filtering through the emails, it saves her at least like 30, 45 minutes a day. So we're looking at just on a minimum scale probably a few hours a week, which for our team, just looking, and I know every school's different, but for our team that is a considerable time saver considering there is a lot of juggling involved with different roles and responsibilities and things like that.

So in our case, having that time, especially at the beginning of the day where it's not something where now she has to dedicate one hour at the start of every day just for this manual entry, and that can be prioritized for other areas of student wellbeing, that's a huge plus and I think not only helps our team's morale, but just knowing that our availability is opened up a little bit more for those important things too, I think is certainly a huge win. So I'm not good at math, but if two to three hours a week, I'd say that's probably eight to ten hours a month if I'm doing the math correctly. So it is a big time saver for sure.

Warren Griffiths [17:58]: Yeah, that's amazing. That's what I love to hear. Love to hear more efficient, start focusing on mission critical instead of busywork.

Alex Gallant: Yes, exactly.

Warren Griffiths [18:02]: Now, one of the things, and I think we're going to get a lot of questions around this because Dallas International, you're servicing the local community, but it is also an international school. So what's different about parent communication at an international school, and where does Orah fit in there for you?

Alex Gallant [18:23]: Yes. I would say just overall our observations just over the past couple years, and we have a lot of students who are from abroad just for a year or two, and some might join our school for the full 15 years at both campuses, but some might just join for one year. But regardless of that, I think what our parents expect and I think appreciate, is that safety and security component for one, knowing that we have awareness of where their kids are on the day-to-day. But secondly, communicating attendance concerns, for lack of a better word, if a student is showing maybe trends in missing too much of one class, like English class, for example, that is able to be communicated a lot more efficiently now because we have alerts set up that'll tell us if they're missing a certain class or missing too much of a certain day or too many days in a row or too many days total.

And our parents are very vigilant, which is, I think in this case, a good thing. Our parents are very vigilant about ensuring their kids' attendance data is accurate. Because for a lot of these kids, they're applying to colleges and universities in Canada and in France and in England and a lot of places abroad. And these are very competitive schools to get into. And they're not asking us to be biased or anything and lower their attendance unfairly, but they just want to know that, hey, our attendance for our kid, what's in the system is accurate, and it's not something that we're trying to do our best with manual entry.

So I think that's been a real communication win, knowing that it's something where we're not only saving time, but we're automating a lot of these processes in a way that is guaranteeing a lot more accuracy overall. So when they submit those transcripts or when they need those recommendations, they know that the absence data, the tardy data is accurate, and it shows that, hey, our student, our child is a committed student. They are someone who shows up, who is invested in their work and is able to present themselves well to wherever they want to go in the future. And it helps paint their student profile not only as accurately, but as helpful as possible for them.

So that's been a big win as well, knowing that when they communicate or have concerns about absences in the system, that it is accurate, and it is reflective of who their student is. And we get, honestly, a lot less of those inquiries now because the data is accurate. And it's something where a lot of the times the adjustments right now are just if a teacher or staff member maybe just misclicked something, which is going to happen regardless of the platform you use. But now it's just a simple fix, and then that automatically rectifies that attendance for that day once we make the fix.

Warren Griffiths [21:31]: No, it's amazing, Alex. And because we're now fully live at Dallas International School, but it wasn't that long ago when we were rolling it out. So looking back, what worked well, and what would you do differently if you had the chance to do it all over again?

Alex Gallant [21:47]: I think obviously what worked well for us rolling it out was having that dedicated onboarding specialist, because what we were able to do is gather, mainly from the administrative team, but also some department chairs too, it's like, okay, let's gather these key team members who are going to be invested in student records and grades and transcripts and attendance data and all that stuff and be able to launch this and walk through this new platform together. And it's not something where we're having to sift through a how-to guide, right? And hoping that we're doing it correctly. So I think being able to do things live with someone in the know, I think was the most helpful component and worked really well, because it's something where everyone might have had something that they were a little bit confused about, but each of those things was maybe a little bit different than the person next to them. So being able to address those not only individually, but then be able to hear the answer as a group, I think was probably the most beneficial component overall. So definitely would keep that the same.

I think the one area we'd improve upon for next time, or maybe do a little bit differently, is with the emergency roll checks. And that's something that Orah helps us with as well, is when we do a fire drill or a shelter-in-place drill or severe weather drill or what have you, those roll checks are also done through Orah. I think it was a little tricky because we just simply, I don't know, either overlooked it or were just focused on the attendance and location piece. But having more intentional practice time or walkthroughs in each of the specific roll checks with the staff during in-service would be something we'd probably do differently next time, and just have that kind of exemplar space where there aren't actually any students yet in the building, but we still have this data, and we can then run that practice prior to the first drill in September, and then we're not doing it actually in the moment.

So I think a little bit more time for practice would have been helpful, whether it is that emergency drill or something else. Just being able to tinker with the system a little bit and the platform, having that dedicated time probably would have been a little bit more helpful. But the onboarding otherwise was, I think, real helpful, and having that group buy-in and dynamic was good too.

Warren Griffiths [23:55]: That's amazing, Alex. That's great insight. So just before we go over to the Q&A, final comment from you, what advice would you give other schools that are either in Texas or international who are considering Orah as a safety tool? What advice would you give them?

Alex Gallant [24:28]: Yeah. I would say certainly consider it for a variety of reasons. I guess for Texas schools first, I would say not only is the location awareness piece valuable because a lot of our schools are pretty big here enrollment-wise. So having that knowledge for all the variety of locations on campus in real time, I think is invaluable, because there's never going to be enough staff members for every single component of a building at every single moment of the day. So having that awareness is super valuable.

And then also in Texas, we have this Texas law, this 90% attendance rule where if a student does fall below that threshold, depending on the circumstances, they might lose course credit or have to take additional time or whatnot. Being able to track that data and get alerts sent to us without having to go digging for it is also super valuable. So those would be the two things I would say for Texas schools just in particular.

For international schools and just schools in general, I just keep coming back to just that time-saving and efficiency and accuracy component. Because our families, as I'm sure at many international schools, independent schools in general, our families expect the school, right, to not only keep their kids safe, but also to be rigorous, not just in the curriculum, but also holding ourselves as staff and as a campus accountable for their kid on a day-to-day basis. And this certainly, nothing's ever going to guarantee something isn't going to go wrong, but this certainly helps mitigate or lower that chance significantly, because with one click we can point to where student A is and where student B is and all that stuff.

So the automation and the efficiency and being able to filter based on your specific school's attendance or handbook requirements is super valuable too, because there's so many filters you can go in and insights you can get based on date range or based on subject or based on grade level or house or group or things like that. You can really whittle down the info to exactly what you need. And it's not just providing you just a baseline overview. You can find so many different nuggets based on what you need. So the filter option too within the location piece and the attendance piece is invaluable as well.

Warren Griffiths [27:00]: Oh, that's amazing. So Alex, we do, I did check out the Q&A. There's a question that came in, but actually maybe I'm going to answer it a little bit, but actually throw part of it back to you. So the question was, where are teachers taking attendance? Are they still doing it in their SIS or are they now doing it in Orah?

So I'll start off saying, your faculty will be taking your roll call inside of Orah. And how that is possible is because we do have a two-way synchronization with your SIS. So we're pulling that scheduling data up into Orah, and then once roll has been taken, that is being pushed right back down to your student information system, which always is your source of truth. It's your filing cabinet. It's where all your legacy documents will reside. So I'm going to pass that back to you, Alex. What was that like for teachers taking it through the browser or through the mobile experience? How was that adopted? What was the initial feeling from your faculty?

Alex Gallant [27:57]: Yeah. So when we kind of introduced Orah as this new platform in in-service trainings in August, we basically, to not only get that buy-in, but just to show how simple or hopefully just as easy it would be, is we explained, okay, so you, teachers always have their SIS or grade book or in our case, Blackbaud. It's always open. We call it MyDIS at our school. So that's always open. That's where we normally took attendance before. All they would have to do is, you're still taking attendance. Now it's really just opening a second tab, the Orah web platform, opening the Chrome extension, or opening the mobile app. And it's just one additional piece that you're taking time to open, so to speak, just technology-wise, and just taking attendance that way. There are no additional steps. The only difference is the attendance is being taken through Orah rather than through the SIS. So the actual mechanism is the same, it's just a different location where the attendance is being taken. So there really are no additional steps or intricacies. It's just the location itself is different.

Warren Griffiths [29:16]: Yeah. And I imagine there are some benefits that your teachers, they have MyDIS open on their computer screens, but I imagine they could be anywhere. They could be loading a YouTube video. They could be on some sort of webpage to start off the lesson, and they can just bring in the attendance without having to be in MyDIS if they had to be.

Alex Gallant: Correct. Yes. If they have something in Google Classroom or a YouTube video, or they're starting off with a slide deck or whatever, then they can just pop open the Chrome extension. They can even do their mobile app. I know a few teachers who do that. So it's something where the attendance still needs to be taken, and now we're just taking it here, and then it's doing its work behind the scenes automatically for us as far as updating everything synchronously.

Warren Griffiths [29:33]: Yeah. That's amazing. And I know the mobile app is very welcome for our athletic coaches and our PE teachers that may not be in a classroom, and they can still do it on a tablet or an iPhone.

Alex Gallant: Yes. Exactly. Exactly.

Warren Griffiths [30:15]: That's amazing. Okay. Alex, I think that's going to bring us to an end for today's webinar. A huge thank you to you and the whole team at Dallas International School. It was an absolute pleasure for me to be working with you from the beginning. Thank you for sharing all your experiences with Orah. We ran out a bit of time to do a full Q&A, but if anybody has any additional questions, by all means reach out to me. My email is very simple. It's Warren, W-A-R-R-E-N, at orah, O-R-A-H, .com. Shoot me an email, or if you have more questions for Alex, we can definitely connect you as well. All right. And we will be sending out the recording to everyone shortly, so please keep an eye out on your inbox. Thanks again, everyone, and enjoy the rest of your day.

Alex Gallant: Yeah. Thanks, everyone.

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