Circle of Influence

 

WOMEN LEARNING, WOMEN LEADING

A satellite map identifying the heat of creative thinking would show a hotspot in Silicon Valley, California. Zoom in: scroll over the high-tech giants—Apple and HP and Adobe and Google and Sun and Yahoo; glide past the venture capital firms and biotech labs to the linear accelerator that signals your arrival at Stanford University; and hover nearby over a wisteria-covered, six-acre campus built around a circle of lawn. The water polo team may be making waves, but the source of the energy you detect is a combination of female confidence, passion, and commitment. You’ve arrived at Castilleja School.

After a century of educating girls, Castilleja brings together tradition, innovation, research, and experience to prepare young women to become leaders in their own lives, and in the lives of others. To encourage them to define success on their own terms. Castilleja enrolls 415 girls in grades six through twelve. It is the only non-sectarian, all-girls middle and high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. Castilleja’s commitment to girls is magnified in scope by its work with the National Coalition of Girls Schools (NCGS), where Casti is one of three schools providing academic leadership to the STEM Program (Science. Technology. Engineering. Math.)

Kathy Burch, who has been at Castilleja for 14 years, is the registrar and assistant to the academic dean and director of college counseling. When prompted to describe the latest developments at the school, Burch skipped right over the “givens”—challenging academics, comprehensive athletics, community service—to changes that affect the school culture. She spoke about the school’s new global focus and their new athletic facility.

Burch began with academics: “We have launched a global focus program. This is very exciting for the students and for the faculty, too. It’s a new way to think about curriculum: we’re trying to incorporate a global perspective that will foster awareness and compassion. In addition to changes in the classes, we have introduced a week of global programming, when normal classes are suspended. It is a really rich week. To prepare for this change, all our faculty were invited to travel to either China or India during the summer of 2006; we inaugurated Global Week in 2006-07. In 2008, the entire junior class traveled either to India or China, as will next year’s juniors, in 2009. A grant will perpetuate such a trip for each year’s junior class. Next year’s Global Week program will be ‘The Americas.’ Each year we will focus on developing a better understanding of a different part of the world.”

In order to expand the athletic facilities to meet the school’s growing wellness program, Castilleja faced major zoning and land-use restrictions. Lacking any vacant land and facing strict height restrictions, the school solved its space problems by digging deep: the new Joan Z. Lonergan Center, a 2.5 story fitness complex, is 60% underground. “The new building has two full-height gyms on top of each other,” Burch explained, “with an underground dance studio, a training room, all kinds of amenities. You cannot tell how big it is by looking at it.” Innovative problem-solving is a hallmark at Casti.

Burch stepped back to chronicle improvements brought in when KEYSTONE was installed.

“We had always used a lot of standalone FileMaker databases, because the programs we had for student information were difficult to use. It was hard to get reports out of them, so these little databases kept springing up.

“We used MacSchool, which wasn’t very productive. Then we tried PowerSchool, which was designed for big public schools; there is not a lot of customization possible. We didn’t fit the mold. We wrestled it to the ground and made it work, but it was a really hard year.

“Then a new IT director came in. He had seen some inRESONANCE demos. Because we were still running all these separate FileMaker databases on the side, we discussed the idea of trying to pull these all together into one system. Our Board approved the purchase of KEYSTONE, even though the school had invested in PowerSchool just one year before. We knew we could really streamline things with inRESONANCE.

“We converted to KEYSTONE in 2002, just two weeks before the start of school. iR’s Charlie Bailey [executive vice president for product development] spent three days with us, so we were able to do a ton of customization on the spot. My FileMaker skill level was intermediate: I had never done scripting or calculations; I could do easy changes to layouts, but the more complicated tasks were beyond me.

“The whole first year was a series of ‘What do we need that we don’t have?’ ‘What can we can tweak in our spare time?’ We made adjustments as we went along.

“I remember the immediate response from iR to our requests. It made me think, ‘These people at iR are not only really smart, but they are interested in me, interested in my school, my problems. I have a relationship with these people at this company. This is so different from the other companies with whom I have dealings.

“KEYSTONE pulled together so many of the functions that we were trying to manage: attendance, transcripts, grades. Before KEYSTONE, in order to create transcripts we were manually entering every piece of data. We didn’t know enough to try export or import. In contrast, when we create a transcript using KEYSTONE, the elegance of the system is amazing. KEYSTONE has taken us a huge step beyond where we were.

“The KEYSTONE migration when we moved to FileMaker 8 in 2006 was painful. I was caught off guard by the magnitude of the change: we lost much of our previous customization. I was madly customizing as we migrated, but it wasn’t as bad as I feared. I was able to do a lot of the work myself, even while the installers were here. It was a wake-up call: there is no possible way we could keep track of all the changes we make, I am customizing all the time.

“As it turned out, a migration provides the opportunity to clean things up. When you’re new with iR, you’re throwing things in, but with a migration, we can get cleaned up.  Now I’m thinking ahead.

“The admissions office installed PORTAL in 2006, and in 2007 we installed ADVOCATE, for college counseling. It’s the same story with ADVOCATE: we had a clunky relational database set up. ADVOCATE has so much more built in than I had made with FileMaker. It’s great. Recently we began really pushing for Development to get GENERATIONS, in order to have iR cradle-to-grave.

“I am really loyal to iR. They have treated us very well, over and above what any other company would do. Even when iR went through a period a year or so ago when the customer support was a bit rocky, I still felt this connection. I still can call Charlie Bailey on the phone. I know he’s super busy, but when I talk to him he is giving me his entire attention. He is really interested in solving my problem.

 “We are gradually broadening our expertise in FileMaker. Our current attendance officer, who attended iRU (inRESONANCE University) with me, is our second best user, and we had a basic training here on campus, which a fair number attended. I am at the point where I would benefit from one-on-one training, to learn the vocabulary and the logic required for creating something new.

“Most of the customizations we do are fairly straightforward. We’re still learning the reports in ADVOCATE, and tweaking it to do exactly what we need, to give us exactly the data that we want. KEYSTONE is a well-oiled machine. For the most part, everything we need to do, it does very well. If scheduling and a gradebook function were incorporated into KEYSTONE, life would be perfect. I do understand the problem: it is tough to find a solution that does exactly what YOU want it to do, that matches exactly the parameters at your school. This is the benefit of working with an open database and a good FileMaker consultant.”

To learn more about Castilleja School, visit their web site.