The Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation (EVSC) is the third-largest school corporation in Indiana, serving approximately 22,000 students with over 1,400 staff. Despite its scale, the EVSC is committed to delivering a high-quality education to each individual student and enriching the community in and around Evansville.
Education is essentially a form of communication. But for a school corporation to succeed in its mission, it must focus on many avenues of communication beyond just teacher-to-student. Educators and staff must communicate freely and effectively to facilitate the efficient operation of a large school district. And this requires a modern unified communications platform.
An outdated system and critical safety gaps
Like many organizations, the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation had been operating with an outdated system that was holding it back and even compromising safety. Bryan Roemke, Phone and Network Coordinator, described an emergency situation in which a teacher “picked up the phone and called 9-1-1 … and there was dead air.” This simply can’t happen.
Furthermore, the analog line setup provided no notification to IT when the 9-1-1 calling capability dropped, meaning the system wasn’t only unreliable, it was unreliable in murky ways. So, when the EVSC received an end-of-life announcement regarding its system, the corporation knew it was time to move to a modern platform that was faster and more reliable.
With the old system’s contract ending, the EVSC began looking for a new solution through a bidding process.
A unified cloud platform
The EVSC evaluated five or six different solutions and, in Roemke’s words, “Webex was the clear best.”
The EVSC chose Webex Calling to be its primary cloud-based telephony system. With thousands of staff and students, the corporation needs a solution like Webex calling to enable its personnel “to communicate with parents and build a sense of community,” explained Roemke.
The EVSC also selected Cisco because of Webex Calling’s integration of RedSky Technologies solutions, enabling clients to have an active location for 9-1-1 emergency calling coverage for their entire workforce.
Given the emergency calling failures of the corporation’s previous system, the RedSky integration is what stood out first. Cisco’s RedSky partnership instantly provided peace of mind for Roemke and his colleagues. The RedSky integration provides precise, pinpoint location data for any 9-1-1 call based on a MAC address, meeting federal requirements. Now, emergency workers can get to the exact location quickly. This effectively addresses security concerns related to school safety and student data protection.
According to Roemke: “For me, the RedSky integration is super personal because I have a wife and two kids who are at the school corporation. I want to know that if they pick up a phone and call 9-1-1, they can get somebody there as quickly as possible. With Cisco and RedSky, we have more accurate 9-1-1 information.”
Nothing is more important than safety, especially for an educational organization, so it’s natural that this is what first caught the attention of Roemke and his colleagues at the EVSC. But the corporation also needed a system that makes all forms of communication fast, easy, and reliable. Webex offered this in several ways.
Such a large school corporation also needs an IT team that can function efficiently. To help this group, the EVSC chose the Webex Control Hub. The centralized management platform helps the IT team by offering remote troubleshooting and rapid deployment.
Last, the EVSC chose to utilize Webex Messaging and Vidcast to help the teachers. Webex Messaging enables them to quickly message one another or other staff at the corporation, and Vidcast allows teachers to record lesson plans to send to students at home.
Transforming operations, safety, and instruction
But how has the EVSC deployed Webex? Roemke explained: “Every teacher has the Webex app on their school-provided device, and it gives them access to Webex Calling, Messaging, and Vidcast.” However, there was a lingering worry that was nagging Roemke and his team: “What happens when you lose the internet?”
Using Webex quickly assuaged Roemke’s concerns. “What’s been great for us is we’ve been able to give our secretaries the Webex app on their cellphones. They can set it so they don’t get any notifications until we have a situation where we lose the internet.” In such a situation, the secretaries can “just turn the notifications on, and all their calls go to their cellphones. When the internet connection gets restored, the secretaries just turn those notifications back off and they go back to their desk phones.” This ensures that notifications don’t bother staff on their personal devices, but enables them to use their own phones when internet outages occur.
The EVSC has also unlocked efficiency gains with Webex. The Control Hub saves Roemke “hours of time” by allowing easy, remote troubleshooting and management from any location. And there have been some unexpected benefits as well.
“I’ve also been surprised by the interest in the Business Texting feature for Webex Calling. Some of our nurses came to us and said, ‘Hey, can we get this product?’ And it surprised me. I thought, ‘Why, why would a nurse need texting?’”
The nurses explained to Roemke that when they call parents, the parents often ignore the call, thinking it might be spam or otherwise not urgent. But, the nurses explained, when they send a text that says a parent’s child is in the nurse’s office and ask them to come get the student, the parents typically respond immediately.
Last, the teachers have been enjoying Vidcast. It enables them to conduct what they call a “flipped classroom.” Roemke described how teachers “record a message and their lesson plan [and then] send that to students at home through Vidcast. They can see how many people have watched it.” The next day, the teachers can say to the students, “Raise your hand if you watched the video.” If they see 25 hands go up, but they know only 20 watched it, then they’ve discovered which students are the fibbers in their classroom.
This function has also benefited math teachers and their pupils. Math students can watch lessons at home and do practice problems, with the help of their parents if necessary. This gives students a chance to catch up while freeing classroom time for guided practice with the teacher to handle more advanced problems.
Enhanced safety, communication, and pedagogy with Webex
Moving from an outdated, unsafe legacy system to a unified, cloud-based platform has helped teachers at the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corporation, the IT team, and even the nurses. As a professional and as a husband and father, Roemke is much happier now that the EVSC can rely on Webex to improve safety, help teachers, build a sense of community, and ultimately “accelerate the growth of our students.”
Discover what Webex solutions can do for your organization. Connect with a Webex team member today to learn more.
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