How Southern Oregon Head Start streamlined data collection and saved thousands of dollars in the process

Data collecting is required to demonstrate compliance with federal and state requirements and had become not only a drain on their resources but also took away from their time to interact with children and their families. Beyond data, maintaining strong community relationships had been difficult during the pandemic. As a health and safety precaution during the pandemic, families are not able to enter classrooms, a major blow to morale.

“We’re very, very data-driven and Playground has been essential to help us collect important data related to check-in and other parts of our daily operations. At the same time, family engagement is extremely important, and being able to stay in contact with our families has been essential to maintaining strong relationships with the community. Their service has been truly exceptional…if there’s something I need, the communication goes above and beyond what you’d expect.

Kaycee Cottone,
IS/ERSEA Director

Southern Oregon Head Start & Early Head Start

Playground understood how a data-driven organization operating across multiple sites needed top-down access to reports while making it easier for staff to add data.

Working as partners, Playground developed a brand-new Enterprise user and dashboard to easily see high-level details about every center on one screen, see all students and staff, and generate customized reports that aggregate data across all (or selected) centers. And at no extra charge, Playground built custom reports to ensure that every piece of data could be reported on in a quick and useful manner.

Enterprise dashboard to view and report on data at every level

Custom-built reports for compliance

Check-in via app to ensure every student is accurately accounted for

Saved the equivalent of two full-time salaries with new efficiency

More than just reporting improvements

SOHS transformed their entire check-in process with Playground, empowering families to mark students absent through the app, quickly producing reports used to call and perform safety checks on absent students, and quick, daily wellness checks, with the ability to check-in multiple students at the same time.

Better communication with families

Playground has given SOHS’s families the ability to stay involved in their students’ days from anywhere. They’re looking forward to adopting communication features so teachers can easily share milestones or interesting events that might not always make it to dinner table conversation. Their goal became ours, to ensure "...every child, regardless of circumstances at birth, has the ability to reach their full potential."