Maimonides School is a Pre-K through 12th grade Jewish Day School in Brookline, MA. They moved to Veracross in 2020 after twelve years with Senior Systems. 

The Challenge 

When Deborah Leschinsky was hired as the Director of Technology at Maimonides in 2014, she quickly realized the school needed a new student information system (SIS).  

At the time, Maimonides was operating with a provider they had used for twelve years. Leschinsky felt the system was outdated and provided a lackluster user experience.  

For instance, there was no internal documentation on how the system worked. Whenever a new employee was hired, the school had to reach out to their SIS provider for assistance with onboarding or to answer questions. It felt like they were constantly starting fresh with the system. Additionally, simple data changes were hard to make.  

“Any time anybody had to make a change in [previous SIS], they had to notify everybody else so they could make changes across the system. It was really cumbersome.” 

The school relied on data syncs to update information across the system; however, these syncs were not reliable or scheduled at a regular cadence. Leschinsky recalls that they never knew when the system was going to sync. 

We just wanted to go into the system and change the new address without having to worry about whether other departments got the new address. Things happen during the day, and you don’t want to have to worry about the data sync!

The Process 

Leschinsky led the search for a new student information system with support from her colleagues. 

“It took no convincing on anyone’s part… as soon as I started saying, maybe there’s life after [previous SIS] we had great enthusiasm. It was pretty much a no brainer that it was time for something else.” 

Once there was internal momentum towards a new system, Leschinsky formed a search committee. She brought together leaders from each department including the Director of Finance, Director of Admissions, Director of Development, and the Principal. Direct reports from each department were also brought into the conversation to share their insights about common pain points and non-negotiables for the new system.  

The main criteria for their new SIS included: 

  • A single-record database that was automatically updated across the entire system.  
  • A web-based system that was easily accessible by users.
  • A comprehensive suite of tools offering a wide range of modules across departments.  

The Veracross Solution 

They began their search in June of the year prior to their desired implementation. As Maimonides surveyed the marketplace, Veracross quickly became a frontrunner due to its comprehensive module offerings.  

We were looking at vendors that had a solution across all of the different modules, and there weren’t many options… it was Veracross and one other system. We were prepared to look at many different vendors but there just weren’t that many out there!

Maimonides liked that the Veracross SIS was built from the bottom up and provided a consistent experience across each module and integration. Leschinsky adds that “Everything we saw at Veracross was just so wow to everybody on the team. Looking at it and seeing that this was something we could have… people were very enthusiastic about moving to Veracross.” 

They signed an official contract in January with plans to implement in March. The onset of COVID-19 impacted their initial progress, but through a strong partnership with the Veracross implementation team they were able to start the following school year fully on board with Veracross. 

Several years later, Leschinsky and team are relying on Veracross to both power and empower their entire school. Take a look at how they’re utilizing our query system: