Success Story: Pinckney Community Schools

Pinckney Community Schools Finds “One-Stop Shop”

Challenge:

Pinckney Community Schools was looking for a “one-stop shop” to replace and modernize its existing, disconnected and disparate sources of data and reporting.

As they work to streamline several operations and functions district-wide, the district was looking for a single solution that would allow them to analyze multiple types and sets of data across the district, in a system that was user-friendly, with dynamic graphs and charts that are easy to read, and one that allowed users to communicate transparently with district and broader community.

Solution:

The district implemented Munetrix’s suite of solutions and tools specifically designed for schools, educators and administrators, including the Academic Module and the Financial Module. Pinckney began introducing their community to the Munetrix by using the system regularly during school board meetings to share the monthly Extended Learning Plan updates required during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, as board members or the community ask questions about budgets, financial information, enrollment, staffing, academic achievement scores, etc., the district leadership team uses the Munetrix system—live—to address the questions, pulling up the appropriate data or documents to reference when needed, as needed, on the spot and on the fly!

Outcome:

Munetrix provides “a night and day difference when it comes to transparency reporting. It is all in one place, clean, fresh, easy to navigate for the public, and easy to manage for the user. So much more appealing and easier to use than our old system.

Jamie Cowan

Assistant Superintendent for Finance & Operations

The district is using the Debt Manager and Capital Improvement Project apps to manage debt schedules and CIP projects across the district. This feature also provides summary reports for transparency, available to the public on the district Munetrix homepage.
The leadership team regularly uses the Peer Groups tool to compare the district to like districts in enrollment, fund balance, economically disadvantaged students, geographical area, etc.
The district finance department has begun uploading their monthly check register to Munetrix, providing them with reports and a dynamic searchable check registry for citizens, compared to a Google folder with links to multiple Google Sheets.
Jamie also frequently uses Munetrix to pull financial information and data for meetings, board presentations, etc. She loves having the data easily accessible at her fingertips.
Jamie regularly uses the Financial Data Explorer to compare expenses for the district with other area districts at the fund, function and object code level. She regularly looks for creative ways to reduce expenses to continue to bring the district out of fiscal distress.

“Munetrix makes it so easy to look at and use data.”

Basia Kieher

Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum

She is using the Peer Groups tool to compare Pinckney to other districts across multiple data sets including student achievement, pupil accounting, staffing, operations and finance.
Basia shared that they were looking at the Cohort Enrollment Trends graph earlier this year and identified they were losing students between 9th and 10th grade at the high school. This was an uncommon occurrence as students usually leave districts between 8th and 9th grade when transitioning to high school. After doing some additional research, they identified it was a programming and offerings issue, and they were able to make adjustments.
Basia plans to implement the Munetrix Academic Module platform fully over the next two years.

“Munetrix is a very efficient and useful tool!”

Richard Todd

Superintendent