Double Scoop: Safety Through Software

David Owen: 00:00:00

Did you know that our students are safer thanks to apps developed by our very own coding staff? We're looking into it on this edition of the Inside Scoop. Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Inside Scoop. I'm David Owen.

As always, please give us a like, subscribe and share this podcast if you learned something new or helpful today. Cobb Schools has a long history of excellence in a variety of areas.

Did you know one of those areas is custom programming or coding to meet the needs of our students, families and staff? That's true. Filling us in today is our Director of Information Systems, Mr. Ryan Pynes. Ryan, welcome to the podcast.

Ryan Pynes: 00:00:43

Thanks for having me on. I'm honored to be here.

David Owen: 00:00:45

Can you tell us just a little bit for those who don't necessarily know what information systems is? Can you give us some insight on what that means in Cobb's.

Ryan Pynes: 00:00:55

Yeah. So trying to boil it down to a simple one liner.

We are basically as information systems, responsible for every computer based enterprise system that houses data of any type within the district. So it's not just student data, but it's also our business services data. So finance, hr, payroll, all of those things.

We are responsible for collecting and securing that data within systems.

David Owen: 00:01:26

Okay. So when we register our students for school, there's a lot of data or personal information that we hand over to the school district.

And so your job or your department's job is protecting that.

Ryan Pynes: 00:01:42

That's correct.

That's, you know, as far as a student record is concerned, that's the starting point when a parent decides they want their student to attend Cobb Schools during online registration is when we first get their students and their families information.

David Owen: 00:02:00

So we just did a podcast about students leveling up to kindergarten and a great podcast, by the way, if you got a kid in that category, you definitely want to watch that. But one of the things about it is the registration process does ask for quite a bit of information.

I know there are federal laws that require protecting that data. Right. And of course, just an ethical approach to life would say we want to be trustworthy. How much? I mean, Cobb Schools is not brand new.

And I think about all the students that have come through the doors of Cobb schools. That's a lot of data we're talking about.

Ryan Pynes: 00:02:43

It really is. So first of all, we collect. Most everything we collect is mandated by the state. We are required to report data to the state.

So most everything that we collect is either the Georgia Department of Education says we must or it's something that we need in order to educate a child. And so it's actually not kindergarten. We're doing pre K enrollments as well through online registration.

So it actually starts earlier for parents who are interested in taking advantage of the Cobb pre K pre program.

David Owen: 00:03:16

So it's just a variety of things too. Right. So we do custom app development, I guess we'd call it. What is the benefit? Why are we doing that? Why not just go to.

I don't know if it exists, but Schools R Us and purchase the best fit for the Cobb school district for whatever it may be, whatever the need is.

Ryan Pynes: 00:03:40

So I really have to start with. With the environment that is Cobb County School district. The superintendent has made it a priority to invest in our people.

We do that through our budgeting and giving raises when the money is there. But also one of the things that he says on a routine basis is we want to make Cobb the best place to teach, lead and learn.

David Owen: 00:04:08

Oh yeah.

Ryan Pynes: 00:04:09

So we have attracted the best of the best in Cobb County. We have professionals, no matter what the specific area is.

eve, and I've been here since: 1998

And so because of that, when there are challenges or issues that arise, those very highly professional people don't always have a solution that can be suited with a software program that already exists. So I always, when we get into the conversations with those leaders, I ask them, is there something out there that fits your need perfectly?

If so, and you have the money to do it, go buy that. But if you don't and you require customization, let's talk and see what we can do.

And more and more these days, the last 10 to 15 years, that has come up more and more that, no, we really need a special solution. We found something. We like pieces of it. But we really would like your team to come in and develop us a custom solution from the ground up.

That's exactly what we need.

David Owen: 00:05:19

Yeah, it's always nice when you can find that perfect fit. I would imagine that you guys get involved in helping to review.

Ryan Pynes: 00:05:27

Absolutely.

David Owen: 00:05:28

Softwares for.

Ryan Pynes: 00:05:29

We are part of that approval software process where we vet the.

The potential vendor as a company and also the product that they're offering to make sure that it meets our standards for data security and privacy and their practices of how they're going to guarantee they keep our data safe.

David Owen: 00:05:51

So probably the biggest app that parents would be aware of would be CTLs. Did your team get involved in that development?

Ryan Pynes: 00:06:01

So we were not directly involved in the development of.

Of that product, but we did work with the vendor because CTLS is our learning management system now and it is a part of the student information system ecosystem, so to speak. So we were. That summer of COVID it was a. I always think about that.

Of course they started their work before that, but that summer really set into high gear. We must be prepared to teach students online when August comes around because we knew that was very likely.

And so while we didn't develop the software, we were heavily involved with the vendor and of course, all of the data that they needed to roll out that platform, all that data came from us and our data warehouse and all of our online systems.

David Owen: 00:06:52

So you guys probably had to work out how they access our data, how our data is protected and all of that.

Ryan Pynes: 00:06:58

And it comes back as well.

You know, teachers create assignments within ctls and then we take those assignments, those graded assignments and put them back in our synergy grade book. So all of those kind of data integrations had to be figured out very quickly while the vendor is also building the platform at the same time.

It was a hectic two months.

David Owen: 00:07:21

Yes, I think we all remember it and want to forget it, right?

Ryan Pynes: 00:07:25

Absolutely.

David Owen: 00:07:25

So why don't you tell us what software products you guys have developed and how that might meet that criterion.

Ryan Pynes: 00:07:34

Yeah. So we've talked in the past about different types of student safety. And so the first obvious one is physical safety.

And so a couple that we've developed that specifically address that is our Go Safe.

It's a elementary school student dismissal system that what it does more than anything is give some accountability to when was, when did a student step off of campus? Whether that was on a school bus or a car, in car line or released to an after school program of some kind.

David Owen: 00:08:09

Wasn't that developed or wasn't that the brainchild of a principal somewhere?

Ryan Pynes: 00:08:17

Yes. You know, we had one of our principals that really kicked off that project and brought the importance of it home.

It was an idea that we had had internally but hadn't moved on. It was in the back of my mind. And I got a call one day from William Dryden, who was the principal at Fry at the time.

And he's like, he said, ryan, you know, my biggest concern is that, you know, the superintendent, it's student safety is first and foremost on his mind. So that it's also mine. I want to make sure that we know and we can look back through data to know that a student safely left our campus.

And how did that happen down to the second, when did that happen? And so he initially Wanted to purchase something else.

And having had this idea rolling around in my brain for a while, I was like, man, I would really love for you to be partners with us in developing something that every elementary school could use for. For their dismissal process.

And, you know, as a byproduct of that, he wanted to make sure that, you know, his hallways were as calm as possible during that time. And if there was a way to make the car line itself move more efficiently.

So not necessarily, you know, faster isn't always better, but if it's more orderly and is more efficient, then there's real value in that.

David Owen: 00:09:41

Yeah, I. First of all, anybody who's been in the hallway of an elementary school that doesn't have this app knows what we're talking about.

The noise level gets really high. A lot of the approaches or the methods used previously were teachers and administrators with walkie talkies that are squawking all the time.

Ryan Pynes: 00:10:01

Exactly.

David Owen: 00:10:01

And this brought an element of calm to the teacher. Right. It did.

Ryan Pynes: 00:10:05

Every elementary school that we've implemented this, which is all but like three or four now, they all say the same thing. Okay. It has. It has really just brought more order.

They all had their good processes, but it took any type of, you know, extra noise, walkie talkies out of that process.

And it's all done with, you know, screens and scanning things and having students move orderly to whatever mode of transportation is taking them away from campus.

David Owen: 00:10:37

And they.

I've also heard it said, I had a conversation with William Dryden at the time, and he was telling me that one of the things that he really takes comfort in is that accountability.

Ryan Pynes: 00:10:51

That's right.

David Owen: 00:10:52

That you can't just call the office five minutes before dismissal and have a kid go in a different car or whatever.

Ryan Pynes: 00:11:01

Yeah.

For parents, that has been a huge benefit that they no longer have to do the handwritten note that, hey, my kid is normally a bus rider, but today I'm gonna pick him up. Now there's a parent facing app where they can go in and change today's dismissal. And they can do it up to a certain time online.

And it automatically shows up on the teacher's screen right before they dismiss the students.

David Owen: 00:11:25

That is a nice thing. I have witnessed it in action. And it's just incredibly sleek, smooth. I think they even said the car line goes faster.

Ryan Pynes: 00:11:36

Absolutely. We have data to prove that, by the way.

David Owen: 00:11:38

Okay.

Ryan Pynes: 00:11:38

Yeah, it's significantly faster, about 20% on average.

David Owen: 00:11:42

Now that's Go safe. You've also got. Is it passport?

Ryan Pynes: 00:11:47

Passport.

David Owen: 00:11:48

Okay, tell us what passport Is So.

Ryan Pynes: 00:11:50

Initially, years and years ago, we developed the first version of the field trip system, which was strictly a transportation facing system app. It helped them schedule their bus drivers in order to fulfill field trips that schools wanted to go on.

David Owen: 00:12:07

Okay.

Ryan Pynes: 00:12:08

There was an event that happened over a weekend where Mr. Ragsdale said, hey, I'd like to know who all is on this field trip. It was a specific area of town and there was no real issue. But as, as he will do, I want some information on this.

There were more than one school had sent students on this field trip. And so it took a while to track down the principals to say, hey, give me a list of all your students that were there.

We're talking about a weekend or late night, some situation like that. And it got to a certain point that we eventually got that information from Mr. Ragsdale, but it wasn't as fast as it should have been.

So the way he does things is he turns to Sherry Hill and said, let's fix this. And so when Sherry Hill gives me a call, I like to make her happy.

And it's funny, when she's speaking to a room full of leaders to leaders, she will say, don't turn to your left or right and ask who's going to help me? We are the help. You are the help. So it was our job to make sure.

The charge that we had was we need to make sure we know where every student is at the district level. The schools already know, their principals knew at that time.

But from a district perspective, we need to, on a screen, be able to pull up every student where they are right now on a potential leg of a field trip. Yeah, so that was the charge that we had in developing the new version of the field trip system.

David Owen: 00:13:44

So. And I'm just picturing the old days prior to, prior to this app. Maybe it was a clipboard with a roster and pencil to check off.

Ryan Pynes: 00:13:54

Well, it started before that.

The school would send something home, a piece of paper that says, we're wanting to go on this field trip expecting the parent to fill in all this information that we already have, student information. So you're talking about frustration on the parent's part. You already know my student's name and student ID and all these things.

They're filling those things out, they're sending that paper back to the school. And so the school is then producing their roster.

And then if there's any type of other approval that they need to get from the parent at a later time, maybe something changed with the trip, that's another piece of paper that gets sent home, the parent has to sign it. Again, didn't I already say that my kid could go? Well, we added something new.

David Owen: 00:14:37

Yeah, A waiver for rock climbing or something.

Ryan Pynes: 00:14:40

So now every bit of that process, from the entry of the field trip information to the assignment of the bus driver to the authorization by the parent that their child can go on this field trip is now completely online.

David Owen: 00:14:54

Okay. And so there you're not only serving the safety of the child, but you are streamlining that whole permission form process for the parents.

Ryan Pynes: 00:15:05

Correct.

David Owen: 00:15:05

And providing a layer of accountability on the trip itself.

Ryan Pynes: 00:15:10

That's right.

David Owen: 00:15:10

I'll share this one anecdote. It was a trip not with Cobb schools, I'll be clear on that.

But there were four busloads of teenagers going on this multi state trip and they pulled over and everybody got lunch at the fast food places and it's time to get back on the buses. Thought we had everybody and start taking off in about 20 minutes.

Got a phone call saying, hey, you left one of your kids here, she was in the bathroom.

So, you know, sure, it could have been a checklist and should have been at that time, but this is one of those things that makes sure every child is accounted for at every moment.

Ryan Pynes: 00:15:54

Of the trip, and particularly when we're talking about athletics, because again, any trip that's taking students away from school goes into this application.

So anytime an athletic team has a sporting event and they want to take both the boys and the girls basketball team to a specific school and they're taking more than one bus, we know which students are on which bus. So if you can imagine one of the buses has a flat tire or an issue and maybe that bus of students is going to be late.

Through our system, someone from that's an adult on the field trip could notify the correct parents that, hey, your student is going to be late getting back to school because they know they're on.

David Owen: 00:16:42

That particular bus, that is so incredibly important because as parents, we're all constantly nervous and that is fantastic. So, all right, so earlier when we were talking about go safe, you said almost all of the schools, but not all of the schools.

What can parents do to make sure that their school is using the apps available to help make their students as safe as possible?

Ryan Pynes: 00:17:07

Yeah, so, I mean, you know, we do leave a lot of the communication with parents to our schools. They know their communities better than we do.

So I would really urge parents to talk to your school administrators and just say, hey, we've heard about this great tool that elementaries have to be able to release their students. And have you guys thought about. And again, if a principal hears that two, three, four times, they're gonna feel.

David Owen: 00:17:34

Like that I need to pay attention,.

Ryan Pynes: 00:17:37

That a majority has spoken somehow. And so I would encourage parents to do that.

If you've heard this podcast and you like what this product can offer, then I would encourage them to reach out to their school administration.

David Owen: 00:17:52

So I know we're talking about apps that you've developed, you know, 99% for internal use only, but is there any resource of information where they can learn more about it or is it just simply contact the school and ask what the thoughts are if they want to know more?

Ryan Pynes: 00:18:12

So a lot of the information that is parent facing that we can deliver as a district will be on our website. We do have a specific student and parents link on our district website and so information about Parent View is there.

All of the custom apps that we produce for parents live within ParentVue.

David Owen: 00:18:34

Okay.

Ryan Pynes: 00:18:34

Parents are already very familiar with ParentVue. That's where they go to view their students grades and schedules and those things.

So we put anything that is parent facing in that same menu so it's easy for them to find. So those kind of things, they could find information on our website.

Other things like go safe, we do leave that to the schools to communicate with their parents because they may have a specific timeline that they want their parents to go in and set their dismissal defaults.

So a certain maybe day or two before school or even if they want to wait until a week or so to implement Carline, they may tell their parents wait until then to go in and set their options.

So when it makes sense, we allow the schools to do those parent communications and then anything that's general information of where to find something, we do try to put it on our district website.

David Owen: 00:19:26

Well, this stuff is just phenomenal value. There have been so many applications, no pun intended, where it was evident. Like what you said earlier. I've already given this information.

Why am I doing it again? So I'm glad that you guys are tackling this. I'm sure the, the listeners are equally thankful that you're reducing their workload.

As parents, that's a big obligation.

Ryan Pynes: 00:19:50

One of my points of emphasis was to remove every bit of paper that is still involved in a key process in the district. And the first ones we really want to hit with that is anything that goes to a parent. And I feel like for the most part we've done that.

I realize there are still maybe some Outliers put, but that was really a goal for me is because paper with student information on it, that is a threat, because that paper may or may not make it home safely and then back to school safely, and it might have sensitive student information on it. So to me, that further ensures the safety of the data that's attached to a student by making sure we get everything online appropriately.

David Owen: 00:20:35

What other apps do you guys have that you're particularly proud of in terms of just, in general, the charge of the school district, keeping students safe, their data safe, and so forth. Is there anything else that you might want to add?

Ryan Pynes: 00:20:51

So I feel like that once we've done everything we can to address physical student safety, and then we've tackled the security of their data that could be used, you know, to harm their identity, the next thing that we think about is, you know, it's the primary charge of the district as a whole, which is student success. The easiest way we can define student success is, are they on track to graduate?

David Owen: 00:21:16

That's kind of important.

Ryan Pynes: 00:21:17

It is. And you can't wait until they failed at that in order to address it.

So we developed a system, along with academics and Kelly McNabb to come up with a very simple red, yellow, green alerting system for every single student. And that red, yellow, green status indicates their threat or success on their path towards graduation.

David Owen: 00:21:43

Wow.

Ryan Pynes: 00:21:44

So academics with Kelly, they created rubrics that determine what causes a student status to go to yellow or red.

And of course, we have, like I've mentioned, lots and lots of data, historical data for the student and for the district as a whole that we can pull from to feed this system. And it's something that we created in house. The data stays in house.

And we're not paying a company millions of dollars a year to have developed and then maintain a product like that.

David Owen: 00:22:14

So you're giving, like, an alert system to make sure, hey, you need to pay attention because you forgot to do this course or something that's required.

Ryan Pynes: 00:22:23

The superintendent has touted our improving graduation rates over the years, and this tool, I believe, has definitely contributed to that, because you're looking for ways to make sure as best you can that a student doesn't fall through the cracks, so to speak. This is available to our teachers, to counselors, to school administrators.

They could easily see at any time any students that are in that yellow or red status area and then take action appropriately.

David Owen: 00:22:55

Well, thank you so much for coming by and sharing all of these nuances of what you do. We really appreciate the work you do behind the scenes.

You don't get accolades for what you do, but you do get maybe a feeling of appreciation for not having to refill out forms.

Ryan Pynes: 00:23:11

You know, I've loved being here. I've been here my entire career. Our team, they're all veterans that, you know, have opportunities to go do other things.

But there's a clear purpose here at Cobb, and that helps make the work itself more rewarding when you have that clear student success as a goal. And so it really is our pleasure to do the work that we do.

And we're constantly looking for ways to improve, you know, the things that our parents have to deal with and certainly our staff and students as well.

David Owen: 00:23:40

Well, Brian, again, thank you so much. If you've gotten something from this, this podcast, learned something new. I know I have.

Make sure you give us a like subscribe and share it with a friend. Thank you for listening to this edition of the Inside Scoop, a podcast produced by the Cobb County School.