Foxborough Public Schools Transformed Onboarding and Reporting with Helios Ed 

Foxborough Public Schools Transformed Onboarding and Reporting with Helios Ed 

Foxborough Public Schools (FPS) serves approximately 2,596 students across five schools. FPS offers a wide range of opportunities that support students’ academic, personal, and social development. They provide enriching educational experiences that foster intellectual growth, creativity, character development, and leadership—preparing students to become healthy, responsible, and innovative members of society. 

Summary   

Aaron Hyre, Director of Technology at Foxborough Public Schools says, “It’s extremely important to make sure that we’re keeping our staff records up to date.” By partnering with Helios, FPS significantly improved the efficiency of its state reporting processes. With their new modules in place, including the Helios Core, Onboarding, and more, data is now centralized and easily accessible. This allows staff to generate reports and easily access necessary data when they need it. Hyre says that one of their priorities was to “reduce duplicate data entry” to save their team time.   

Challenge 

In addition to their established modules, FPS also has an ongoing interface with MUNIS to reduce redundancy. Before partnering with Helios Ed, FPS was looking for a solution to improve communication between their onboarding, position control, and state reporting, as well as streamlining these processes.  

Why Foxborough Public Schools Chose Helios Ed  

Hyre says the expertise Helios has in working in the K-12 space was a standout element in their decision process. “It’s built for K-12 education,” says Hyre. “It definitely gave an advantage to Helios over a number of the other HRM systems.” Hyre shared that the partnership with Helios has been positive in establishing necessary integrations and helping meet their unique needs.  “We were really pleased with your willingness to partner with us,” says Hyre. Since their implementation, the FPS team is excited to continue to grow and utilize the robust functionality of Helios.  

Onboarding 

The Helios onboarding module has resulted in a smooth and efficient process when welcoming new hires to the FPS team. This saves time and resources, all while making a great first impression. “Helios has made a significant impact, primarily in the area of onboarding,” says Hyre. Before Helios, there was potential for a lot of back and forth throughout the onboarding process. For example, if a new hire forgot a document they needed for onboarding at home, they would have to return with the document at a later time. Now, new hires are able to submit the necessary information from anywhere. “It’s definitely saving time from the applicant perspective,” says Hyre.  

Streamlined State Reporting and Staff Changes 

Helios has helped FPS simplify their state reporting process from start to finish. Firstly, FPS is able to seamlessly track key information such as staff credentials, changes, attendance, and more. These are all essential components of compliance and integral parts of the state reporting process for FPS. Additionally, Helios has helped to establish useful plugins to communicate with their existing systems. After employees have been onboarded in Helios, their data is able to be sent to the student information system (SIS) through a secure plugin interface. This helps the data in their SIS to be up to date for state reporting. Streamlining their communications, as well as the flow to get the necessary information to the state, were some of their biggest priorities for FPS. Now this information is captured efficiently, making the reporting process smoother and more effective for everyone. 

Educator Credit Process 

FPS recently made the transition from paper records to streamlined digital records for certified teaching staff in terms of their degrees and their course work credits. With the help of Helios, FPS efficiently tracks professional development credits for teachers, as well as education and training. This information has proven invaluable when looking at projections in terms of salary and staffing, but also for teachers who require that information for the license renewal process. Finding the commonality of information needed between departments and how that can be leveraged to be most productive has helped their team continue to save time. 

Saving Time Where It Counts 

Jamie Quattrini, Administrative Assistant to the Superintendent at Foxborough Public Schools, has seen the onboarding process greatly increase efficiency for all involved. “I would definitely say there’s days being saved for a new employee,” says Quattrini. She notes this is because new hires are able to complete their packets and submit materials online, rather than taking time to come into the office in person to complete their onboarding process. When hiring a new team member that is wrapping up their employment elsewhere, it can be challenging for the new hire to find time to come into an office to return their paperwork, submit documents, and more. Having everything digitized in Helios saves tremendous time for the FPS team, as well as new hires.  

Best Practices for Engagement and Buy-In 

Including staff members in the process and conversation around the benefits of a new system builds trust, fosters ownership, and increases buy-in across departments. Implementing a new system can be daunting for districts, but the FPS team quickly discovered key strategies for user engagement. “I think it’s important to involve people in the process, so that they understand the ‘why’”, says Hyre. “It hopefully builds a common understanding of how this will improve everybody’s work and improve outcomes for everybody.” Hyre shared that team members are excited to grow with Helios and go “all in”. Principals and school leaders are embracing Helios with enthusiasm, recognizing its potential to simplify daily operations and reduce paperwork. By streamlining tasks like onboarding and workflows, Helios gives leaders more time to focus on other responsibilities. Many are especially excited about the transparency that Helios offers in terms of real-time visibility into staffing. This allows school leaders to make decisions efficiently, stay compliant, and collaborate even more easily with teams.   

Hyre and Quattrini Sum Up Their Experience with Helios:  

Hyre and Quattrini agree that Helios has saved time across the board. “It’s positively saved time on my end,” says Quattrini. She adds, “It’s saved time on the new employees end.” In closing, Hyre says Helios has been “a great partner for us.”