Managing a large community of special education students presents a challenge. That’s why Houston-based Sheldon ISD chose the Embrace® suite to eliminate compliance issues and relieve the paperwork load from staff’s shoulders.
Two years into using the product suite, the district is ecstatic about it. “The system is fantastic. It's very easy to maneuver and get your job done," says Brooke Douget, Executive Director at Sheldon ISD.
Sheldon Independent School District covers 13 schools and 11,000 students.
The problem
Before adopting the Embrace suite, the team at Sheldon ISD experienced many challenges with their existing IEP solution: frequent bugs, unresponsive tech support and a lack of system accessibility.
“They would do frequent updates without troubleshooting, and these updates would break something else,” recalls Brooke.
Due to the frequent bugs they were experiencing, the team at Sheldon ISD was constantly requiring tech support. However, they were met with poor customer service that left them feeling frustrated and unsupported. As Brooke explains: "You could put in a support ticket, but it would take up to two weeks before they responded. It was very hard to stay solution-focused."
That's when the team began looking for alternative solutions that could meet their needs.
The goal
The Sheldon ISD team wanted to reduce time spent submitting multiple support tickets and waiting for troubleshooting. They wanted to finally have a working system that would offer compliance safeguards.
Training all staff on the new software quickly and with minimal interruptions to their workflow was another big goal for the leadership team. Having a vast number of teachers to train was a test of whether or not Embrace could handle it.
“That was a huge thing for me, because it's very hard to pull our special ed teachers for multiple hours,” explains Brooke. “[With Embrace] we were able to train our teachers to where they felt comfortable enough to implement and document services. So that has been a great transition.”
It's very easy to maneuver. We were able to be fully trained within 2 hours.
The solution
Judgement-free customer support, easy transition.
As they geared up for the move to new software, both leadership and staff were anxious. Especially after their previous experiences talking to support in the past. Embrace has completely changed that impression.
Brooke describes the support from the team behind Embrace as a 'judge-free zone'. They would say, "Okay, this is what happened. I understand now, Brooke. Next time you do this instead." As Brooke recalls, "When I got off the call, I had my solution. I felt like they fully empowered us, embraced us, and supported us so we can be successful.”
"I had to run ARD meetings myself last year, which forced me to learn the [Embrace] system beyond just the Executive Director role. And when I facilitated meetings, I could close out the IEP meeting within 30 minutes. It's very easy to use.”
The encouraging and human element of support was crucial to an easier adoption by staff.
“It has been a great transition, because it's really hard to transition to a new program. Moving of all your records, making sure all those get caught and carried over, and then just learning the new system is a big undertaking in itself. And so we had a great experience, and I am happy to say that we are truly satisfied with Embrace.”
Real-time, efficient collaboration
The Embrace suite has allowed for better collaboration between staff in IEP meetings. Fields get automatically locked when someone begins working on them, preventing any accidental overriding.
“When it comes to compliance, we're able to be in one system together,” explains Brooke. “But if my colleague gets in and is working on the same kid, he or she can't override the work that I'm doing. So, when they log in, the system automatically tells the person, ‘Hey, Brooke Douget is in the system,’ you know, ‘let her finish, and then you can get in and do it.’”
Consistent document formatting
Even such a small detail as ensuring consistent formatting across all documents has led to a major improvement in how Sheldon ISD presents and organizes its documentation.“It drives me absolutely insane when I get a document and there's all these different fonts and sizes,” says Brooke. “[But with Embrace] everything is cohesive. It looks much more professional.”
Built-in accommodations and goal writing tools
Sheldon ISD received access to multiple compliance features that guide staff in filling out documents in a compliant way.
“I do like the feature in Embrace where if you are a brand new special education teacher and you're writing goals for the first time, it actually has an accommodation built-in that will teach you how to write a measurable goal that's compliant. It breaks it down for you: you do your time frame, your criterion, your behavior, and then how you're going to measure that student's progress, and it's built in,” explains Brooke.
“But Embrace doesn't force you to do that if you're a veteran teacher. You still have the option to write it naturally, like in a Word document.”
Ability to upload charts/graphs
“I do like the fact that with Embrace, you can have a library of different charts and graphs that you may use for the evaluation side. So, for example, if you're using the Woodcock-Johnson cognitive report, you can go ahead and, on the backend, upload a chart for your evaluators to use, so then you have some consistency when presenting the outcome of the Woodcock-Johnson,” says Brooke.
“It really has given us the ability to place some consistency within our evaluation team, where everything looks the same.”
"Embrace® has a lot of safety nets to identify what you need to be monitoring and seeing if there's a trend. It helps us troubleshoot so it doesn't become a compliance issue.”
No double documenting with Medicaid billing add-on
After adding the Medicaid billing program to their Embrace suite, Sheldon ISD improved their Medicaid billing efficiency and reimbursement, too.
“[Before], a lot of times our staff would have to double document, put it in the system for special ed progress reporting time, but then also have to log into a Medicaid billing program to document the same things again in a different program.”
Double documenting was taking up staff time and was turning into a serious productivity issue.
“That was another component that made Embrace a strong contender for us to really consider selecting as our system. Embrace had that component built in. This multi-component presence of Medicaid billing was one of the deciding factors to go ahead with Embrace,” says Brooke.
The district was able to increase reimbursement after just one year of using the software.
“Moving to Embrace, we still got an increase in return when it came to Medicaid. Our CFO was very impressed with the return. He was not expecting the amount that we did get, and it was a positive surprise. It did help us with our budgeting,” adds Brooke.
“Embrace is much more cost-effective. So we still came out on top, even with the change.”
Benefits that Sheldon ISD saw with Embrace:
- Smooth onboarding: Embrace team made transitioning to a new system easy and empowering for staff.
- Seamless collaboration: Staff can now work together in real time on IEP meetings, with automatic field locking to prevent overriding data.
- Consistent, professional documentation: Standardized formatting and uploadable charts/graphs keep evaluations and reports consistent across the district.
- SMART goal builder: Built-in accommodations guide teachers in writing compliant, measurable goals.
- Medicaid billing add-on increased reimbursements: Eliminating double documentation boosted productivity and increased reimbursement within just one year.
