Enrollsmart Childcare, Preschool and ECE Technology Blog

Our Paper Records Were Potentially Toxic and Weighed Nearly 2,500 Pounds by Jim Shields @enrollsmart In many states, childcare providers are required to maintain child admission records and other child enrollment documents for 3-7 years after a child has left the provider's facility.  I'm not sure about other centers, but 5 years worth of records for the centers we operated took up a lot of space and they were very heavy.   I'm sure that most center owners/directors can attest to how challenging it can be to maintain child files in file cabinets and to keep active files separated from the files of children who have left the center.  However, what many centers do not realize is the health and financial effects extent of maintaining paper enrollment records at their facility. Before we decided to make our enrollment process paperless, we had a significant number of paper child enrollment files maintained on site.  I noticed that when we created our paperless e

Your Parent-Provider Contract:  How an Interactive Website from Enrollsmart Can Help You Enforce It  By Kimberly Newman, Customer Success Leader @enrollsmart Recently, one of our customers had us add his center's Parent-Provider contract to the electronic state forms that we built into his website and, he told us the story why. First, let me explain how our websites are different: We have a library of State-by-State e-Forms that we build into each of our customers' websites and, our e-Forms capture actual signatures and create data files that replace paper files. An electronic version of our e-Forms is delivered to the center Owner/Director each time one is completed. Each form is and its data is saved to the cloud. What this means is that each of the child admission, infant/toddler feeding/care plan, CACFP IEF and, other forms that we include on our customers' websites have every field required for their specific state AND the form requires parents/guardians

Why An Interactive Website And Online Registration Process Were Essential To Our Center's Disaster Readiness by Jim Shields @enrollsmart About a decade ago, I noticed many States starting to require childcare centers to create a disaster plan.  During that time, we were still in the business of operating centers and, we created our disaster plan and posted it as required.  By operating in the Midwest, tornados were a recurring threat and, the catastrophic EF5 tornado that struck Joplin, MO in 2011 sent shockwaves through us because there were several notable destructions of childcare centers during the disaster. We began reviewing our disaster plan to make sure that it addressed some of the most critical issues to deal with in a disaster when it comes to childcare centers: Survivability, Accountability and Family Reuniting. Because we had developed an online registration process with e-Forms, we had contact information for emergency contacts as well as identifying c

3 Reasons Why An Interactive Website Is A Critical Tool In  Controlling Childcare Center Costs by Kimberly Newman @enrollsmart For the past few weeks, we've been in the field working with Directors and Owners. The focus of our time in the field has been spent on re-affirming the pain points as well as the opportunities that exist for childcare centers when it comes to technology. During one visit, we spoke with a center owner who had just signed up for a childcare center management system and, they really didn't under the difference between a website and, an administration system.  So, we spent some time explaining the difference. We also discussed how our interactive websites can be linked to any web-based childcare administration system and, how our web platform is customer facing and that childcare administration systems are management facing and can, often times, lead to more work. Here are 3 core benefits that a website should provide a childcare center wh