Pacoima Charter Streamlines HR with Helios
Pacoima Charter Schools fosters high academic achievement among their large low socio-economic urban population of Pre-K to 5th grade students. Their curriculum focuses on English proficiency, math, and technology. Pacoima’s sees a vibrant community where teachers and parents are empowered with the knowledge and ability to positively impact the education of their children.
In Brief
Pacoima Charter, just like other conversion charters in the LA area, must hire credentialed teachers with English learner authorizations. LA Unified School District (LAUSD) audits the charter school in its annual oversight visit. These visits include combing through teacher credential and staff reports to ensure teachers are credentialed and teaching in their respective areas. Before Helios, Pacoima used an in-house HR database built on Access and Excel. Pacoima implemented Helios in January 2014 and has used it successfully for HR management and reporting including CalPADS, credentialing, LAUSD audits, TB and DOJ, salary verifications, seniority lists, and NCLB.
Why Pacoima Chose Helios
“Coming from the private sector, I realized it’s a waste of time running reports and managing HR manually with spreadsheets. So I looked around and found Helios to satisfy our HR needs,” said Maureen Clarke, HR Director at Pacoima. Helios is designed especially for K-12 so all the education specific HR needs such as teacher credentialing, CalPADS, and NCLB are met on top of general HR features for work history, demographics, pay, and benefits.
LAUSD Oversight Audits and CalPADS
One of the biggest advantages for Pacoima has been a streamlined HR department. They have saved significant time in compliance reporting. While it took over 12 days to compile data and prepare reports for LAUSD site visits, Pacoima can now run these reports in a matter of seconds with Helios. During the LAUSD oversight visit, Pacoima presented these reports from Helios to the auditors. The auditors were impressed with the system and how organized Pacoima’s data was. The oversight visit proved to be a success with no findings. Similarly, the CalPADS staff report took Pacoima over 6 hours to run with their prior database and now it only takes less than an hour to prepare and verify the report.
Credentialing and Reminders Help Avoid Teacher Non-Compliance Helios’ credentialing module and automated reminders have been very helpful for Pacoima. For instance, when the charter hired a substitute teacher at the beginning of school year Helios quickly reminded that their substitute permit was going to expire September 1. This enabled Pacoima and the teacher to get their permit renewed and avoid assignment problems later on. The updated credential got reflected in Helios seamlessly and reports were all accurate. Reporting in Helios has helped Pacoima in many other areas: • Determining bonuses for certificated and classified staff and teachers • Salary verification report • Credentialing management
“Helios has streamlined our HR compliance and management. Reports are so easy to run and they have saved us countless days and last minute headaches in complying with HR requirements and regulations. For example, we have reduced our staff time from 12 days to minutes in creating audit reports for LAUSD. Moreover, Helios offers a very strong credentialing module, which is a must for schools. They truly understand education”, said Maureen Clarke, HR Director.