OUSD is recognized as a community schools pioneer and leader, and has been held up as an example for schools across the country. As part of its community schools model, OUSD goes beyond educational instruction and provides wraparound services to help each student succeed—everything from counseling and mental health services to nutritional support and shelter.This model of supporting the whole child is particularly important in a school district where 33% of the students are English Language Learners and 71% are eligible for free and reduced price lunch.

“What’s important is that we’re getting the right services to the right students at the right time to operationalize equity,” says Superintendent Dr. Kyla Johnson-Trammell.

The process for matching students with services had long been undertaken with whatever tools were available—from paper to online spreadsheets—but OUSD saw an opportunity to improve the system and eliminate the individual silos of information that these disparate processes created.

“From very early on in our community schools work, we had a vision of having a universal, single point-of-entry student record that would allow us to track what services and supports every student was receiving at every school,” says Curtiss Sarikey, Chief of Staff. “The challenge was figuring out how we could leverage technology to best realize this vision and better support student success.”

Utilizing Salesforce reports and dashboards, both the district office and respective school sites now have easy access to the health of the COST process and the students being served. Details around important success metrics—the number of students in COST, where they are in the process, and how long they’ve been waiting to receive services—are easily accessible.

In the student support solution’s initial rollout to five schools within OUSD, the district is starting to see results—94% of referrals have been reviewed and assigned to the next step for follow up.Additionally, 100% of referrals have a known referrer, compared to 60% at the schools not participating in the pilot. The solution is also helping OUSD ensure students are receiving services during school closures.

Feedback from staff has been overwhelmingly positive with many staff members commenting on how easy the technology is to use. According to Bustamante, “Teachers who have been using paper their whole lives have embraced online referrals.”

She adds, “One of our COST coordinators asked all her teachers to convert to online referrals only, and she wasn’t sure how it would go over since some of the teachers were more confident with technology than others. She got 100% adoption, which I think speaks to how accessible the technology is and how convenient COST makes the referral process for our educators.”

Jaymie Lollie, a Community School Manager at Frick Impact Academy, says,“When constantly asked to do more with less, having a product that helps us leverage and maximize limited resources is exciting and necessary. It allows us to not only work smarter, but provide meaningful feedback that every staff member needs to support our students and families effectively and efficiently.”

“This Salesforce solution will make a huge impact on culture and climate across our school,” adds Nicole Pierce-Davis, Co-Principal at Skyline High School. “In the past, COST referrals would sometimes stall, making it challenging to keep our staff on the same page. Now there is two-way communication between COST and staff. Plus, our team now has greater insight into student needs to better support the whole child.”

Starting in school year 2020-21, OUSD rolled out the student support solution to every school in the district that is staffed with a Community School Manager, bringing the tool to nearly 50% of the district’s schools. The goal is to then expand the solution districtwide by the following school year.

Sarikey concludes, “We had a shared vision from the start about how to use technology to best serve our students. Now, with Salesforce in place, we have a world-class platform that can bring together a variety of pieces of information and data points in a single place. That aggregation paints as rich a picture as possible about the students we’re serving and the resources available to support them, so that we can best help them succeed. At the end of the day, that really gets to the heart of the community school.”

“We’re passionate about supporting our students, and we now have the technology to empower all the work we’re doing in our schools and across our communities. It’s been a great match, and we’re excited to see where things go next.”