Student Data System Optimization @ PCS

Overview

Pinellas County Schools ranks among the 25 largest school districts in the United States, serving over 100,000 students across more than 140 schools. Like all Florida districts, it is required to submit detailed student data to the Florida Department of Education through systems such as the Florida Education Data Warehouse.

To meet these requirements efficiently, the district relies on a unified student data system that eliminates manual, siloed processes and integrates key functions such as transportation, food services, athletics, and extracurricular activities. This system also automates core tasks like attendance, scheduling, grading, and parent communication, reducing both staff workload and the risk of error.

Challenge

PCS had invested heavily in a software solution for collecting and analyzing student data across the district, but were struggling to use it to make meaningful decisions that would improve student outcomes on a day-to-day basis. 

At the student level, having real-time data at the fingertips of school leadership, teachers, and parents enables more effective interventions and individualized support to happen for every student.  At the district level, enrollment, attendance, graduation rates, and performance metrics directly affect state and federal funding allocations.  

Approach

  • We conducted 1:1 user interviews with multiple stakeholders and user groups, ran discovery workshops with district teams and leadership, and collected organizational-wide data through an anonymous survey. Surfacing inefficiencies and uncovering root causes led to a comprehensive list of opportunities and solutions for system optimization and modernization.

    • Unified Data Warehouse: Disparate data sources were unified and migrated to a centralized, cloud-hosted data warehouse. This consolidation enhances data accessibility and quality.

    • Microservices and APIs: The introduction of microservices and application programming interfaces (APIs) will facilitate seamless service integration, enabling a modern user interface (UI) and promoting system agility.

    • Strategic Alignment: We collaborated with key PCS departments and team members crucial to implementation. This allowed us to achieve alignment on changes related to organizational structure, processes, systems, and new ways of working.

    • Change Implementation Management: We provided key middle managers with a coach responsible for equipping them with the mindsets, knowledge, tools, and hard and soft skills to succeed in the role they play in implementing the technical, process, and policy changes necessary to make the student data system more efficient and effective.

    • Operating Model: Based on the pre-identified organizational change requirements highlighted in the strategic alignment effort above, we worked with leaders of those departments to stand up or reformat their current operating model to account for core cross-functional efforts, teaching those leaders how to manage in these spaces.

    • Authority and Decision Making: Unison Solutions worked with senior leaders to re-establish authority and accountability in PCS as it related to the technical solutions, aligning everyone around who makes which decisions and how the decisions will be made to include key stakeholders.

Conclusion

By uniting technology, people, process, and policy; PCS streamlined its student data system to cut administrative burden, improve accuracy, and ensure compliance. This freed up staff time and equipped leaders with actionable insights that directly supported better outcomes for students.

Impact

Improved data accuracy
and access.

Faster data-driven decisions across schools.

Reduced compliance risk and staff workload.

Aligned teams and decision-making authority.

  • "By applying the strategies we've learned [in Change Management], I am more effective in my role and ensure that my frustrations do not negatively impact my team. I believe this approach has enhanced our overall efficiency and morale."

  • "I'm more intentional about how I'm handling certain topics of conversation or framing things, and I'm listening for different things so that I can intentionally make choices about what to do or how to handle various responses because of the tools that [Unison Solutions] has provided."

  • “It has made me stop and think about the reactions that I'm having when things might not be going as planned. This made me think: Okay, I've got to do certain things for myself before I can relay anything to my team, and that’s made me a better leader.”