How a school district gained real-time insight into their strategic plan and created a status repository with AchieveIt
ABOUT RICHLAND SCHOOL DISTRICT ONE
Headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina, Richland One is South Carolina’s ninth-largest school district, with 24,000 students that represent 57 countries and 26 languages spoken. With 52 schools and special centers, our district stretches over 480 square miles and encompasses urban, suburban and rural communities.
LIFE IS GOOD
Richland One’s focus has always been on students. Year after year, their graduates go on to attend some of the nation’s most prestigious colleges and universities. In order to properly provide services that enrich the student experience, Richland One manages key strategies within its strategic plan.
BIG CHALLENGE
As the team focused more on strategic initiatives, keeping track of everything became overwhelming. All the strategies were tracked in a Word document and at the drop of a hat, they would be asked for an update on how the strategic plan was progressing. This meant reaching out to 20-30 people to get updates, compiling information, and then presenting in a format that would be meaningful for leadership. This created a process with tracking all over the place, 5-6 different copies of the strategic plan, and conflicting updates on progress.
HELP ARRIVES
So, they turned to AchieveIt. With the plan in AchieveIt, all the information is consolidated in a single location. Instead of chasing down 20-30 people, it’s incredibly easy to request updates from the owners of the strategies. And at the click of a button, a report is generated to be shared with anyone in my organization. Consolidating information and visually viewing progress also helped inform the team on how to migrate from a long, cumbersome plan to a cleaner, more actionable plan.
LIFE IS EVEN BETTER
Now, the organization is able to make quicker, better decisions on its key strategies. Instead of spending time collecting updates, compiling reports, and wondering “How is our plan progressing?“, they can focus more on the actual work that will benefit the organization and students.
After implementing AchieveIt, we were able to see how aligned things became. The ability to simply click a button and produce results to share with the organization became such a new and exciting concept for our team.”
- Dr. Jennifer Coleman
Executive Director of Accountability, Assessment, Research and Evaluation
