In Part 1 of this series, I shared Darlington's 30-year history innovating with data systems and the challenges of maintaining our custom solutions. I also outlined our plan for outsourcing all major systems. Today, I'll focus on the cornerstone of this project: our core database foundation.
Veracross is a leading information management system for independent schools that will replace our most critical database systems: academics, admission, development, and financial operations. We chose Veracross primarily because it provides a true single database solution—something Darlington has never had before.
Currently, we outsource three systems (admission, development, and financial) to a single partner. However, behind the scenes, these are separate databases that don't interoperate effectively. When a current parent enrolled a new student, they might end up with duplicate records in other systems. If that parent updated their email address, the admission office might still use their old contact information. Our in-house academic database synchronized with development only, creating data inconsistencies and requiring manual corrections.
Veracross solves this with one unified database—a single list of people, organizations, relationships, and contact information that all systems share.
While a single database addresses many issues, we also needed a system capable of meeting our complex departmental needs. Veracross offers:
Consistent Experience - One interface with common navigation and tools whether you're a faculty member, parent, or alum, improving usability and making collaboration easier.
Enhanced Communication - A comprehensive platform for administration, teachers, and even volunteers with new message creation options (including SMS) and archived communications. Imagine as a parent or alum being able to look in a single place to find a lost email or lookup a detail from an old letter.
Personalized Portals - Tailored access points for students, faculty, parents, and alumni providing personalized calendar views, academic information, directories, and department-specific functions like event registration, billing, and donation management.
Robust Academics - Significant enhancements as we move from our in-house system to a comprehensive solution handling course requests, scheduling, attendance, transcripts, progress reports, and more.
The goal is effective, sensible data management that meets modern expectations while remaining secure, mobile-friendly, and reliable—especially for boarding families and alumni who rely on remote access.
While comprehensive, Veracross can't do everything. Any system we adopted needed to integrate well with other specialized platforms. Veracross offers a robust API, a standard approach for allowing different databases to communicate. For example, student schedules created in Veracross will automatically update in Toddle (our new learning management system), and grades entered in Toddle will appear in Veracross.
We discovered that some systems we were considering, like Magnus Health and Digistorm, had been acquired by Veracross—suggesting even tighter future integration. This capability gives us confidence that as new needs emerge, we can continue expanding our information ecosystem.
We began transitioning to Veracross last June. The core database, admission, enrollment, and employment systems are complete. Our financial system goes live within days, with development following in weeks. The academic system is nearly ready and will start feeling real as next year's classes are entered in June.
Parents, students, and faculty should watch for welcome emails to create their Veracross accounts soon. This will provide access to the new portal with some initial features like the school calendar, directory, and summer reading information. While there will be an adjustment period, we're committed to making the transition as smooth as possible with support resources available throughout.
Next week, I'll focus on Toddle and what this new "learning management system" means for how our teachers, students, and parents work together to facilitate Darlington's Cycle of Learning. Have questions about features, security, or privacy? Please share them using our Information Systems Questions form. I'll address responses in future blogs and FAQs. I received a few last week and include those responses below.
Q: Will all of these new services be implemented into the Darlington website, or would there be links that students need to click on to go to the certain service? For instance, if I wanted to go to the gradebook, would I go to what I currently go to on the Darlington website, or would I have to go to Toddle?
A: While the public website will remain for one more year, the student, parent, and faculty portals will move to Veracross. We'll provide links to Veracross on the current website for a while. That portal will provide much information there, but there will be clear links for clicking into our other systems like Toddle, Reach, or Magnus. Even better, the logons are all integrated so you won't be constantly signing in everywhere you go.
Q: When teachers send an email with something attached, it is really cumbersome to open on a mobile. Sometimes it won't work at all. The system makes you log in to the website just to look at the attachment and many times after logging in, doesn't direct you to the document you were trying to look at. Hopefully, the new system will make this easier.
A: These small problems with our current system can be a real hassle when encountered over and over. This is a great example of the overall technical improvements I'm looking forward to with having a system that is maintained by a well-resourced software development team!
Q: I would like to see the alumni athletics page brought back. I remember years back you could see which student-athletes went on to play at the college or professional level, similar to "Notable Athletes" pages found on other school websites.
A: Great memory, and great suggestion! I had forgotten about our "Alumni Athletes" page which was a partnership between our alumni and athletics departments. I will certainly share this with the team here as work begins on our new website next year.
A general concept of what the future Parent Portal will look like in Veracross.
