The Shelby County School District is one of the largest school systems in Tennessee. Located in the extreme southwest corner of the state, the Shelby County School District is the fourth largest school system in Tennessee with a population of over 45,000 students. The district includes all the public schools in the county outside the corporate limits of the city of Memphis, including those schools located within the six incorporated towns of Arlington, Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown, Lakeland and Millington.

Business Challenge

Four times per year, the district offers its 4,600 plus employees their choice of over 30 different classes taught by 25 different instructors with a limit of 30 seats per class. Coordinating such a large educational effort can be quite resource intensive, and presented numerous clerical challenges for the district. As a matter of fact, it took four people answering phones and entering data into a registration database, to handle the registration process.

In order to address issues caused by this resource–intensive system, the district embarked on an effort to automate the registration process. The school district designed an on–line registration system, allowing staff members to sign up for class sessions on the web.

Successful Solution

The new system immediately produced amazing results. Daniel Albaugh, Network Administrator for Shelby County Schools explains, 'On our first day of registration 600 people signed up for classes; something that was impossible for us to do taking phone calls. Until we automated the registration process with FileMaker Pro, registration was a nightmare.'

Customer service levels have improved as well. In addition to providing convenient, 24–hour registration, the new system also provides immediate feedback on class status and the ability to handle evaluations once the class is completed. 'Registering directly via the web allows employees to know instantly if a class is full, or on what days it is available. People can get class availability at their convenience, know when and at what school it is being offered, who the instructor is and what is needed to attend class,' Mr. Albaugh explained.

FileMaker Pro is used by everyone throughout our district and is one of our favorite applications, due in no small part to talented employees like John Hester, who developed our class registration system and teaches our FileMaker classes.

— Daniel Albaugh, Network Administrator, Shelby County Schools