Wentzville School District

Summary
‍Missouri’s fastest-growing school district adopted KickUp to manage the entire ecosystem of teacher support — and expanded both learning offerings and educator satisfaction along the way.

The Challenge
‍Wentzville School District kicked off the 2022-23 school year with its highest enrollment in district history — and the trend shows no signs of slowing down. With an average of over 500 new students year-over-year, Wentzville has been the state’s fastest-growing school district for over a decade. And with that growth came the need for more well-supported educators to teach the expanding student population.

Wentzville previously used Google Forms to house PD registration and attendance tracking, plus self-paced learning through a combination of Sched and Google Classroom. But the system was often clunky and not responsive to real-time teacher needs.

“We were taking in professional learning data but not compiling it in a way that was actually useful,” says Wentzville Director of Secondary Learning Priscilla Frost. “It was just a big spreadsheet with no easy way for principals to grasp what was happening. We invest a lot of capital into [professional learning], but without a way to see its effects, all the data was just anecdotal. We didn’t have anything to show for our work.”

Personalizing professional learning to teacher needs was another issue. “We kept a Google Sheet of all the requests but it was hard to break down into useful information,” says Frost. “We have 23 schools and they were still using a paper form to request any type of professional learning. There is one administrative assistant whose job it is to handle requests for the entire district.”

Without a way to bring back timely, accurate updates on coaching and professional learning to the community and school board, Frost knew her department had a tall mountain to climb. That’s when another Missouri client suggested they take a look at KickUp.

The Solution
‍After deciding that KickUp was the right educator success platform to bring structure to its teacher support opportunities, the district purchased it in spring 2022 and began implementation over the summer.

“We dove right in,” says Frost. “First and second-year mentorship and instructional coaching was so easy to set up that we are now adding PLCs.”

With the help of KickUp, Frost was able to not just maintain Wentzville’s teacher support offerings but expand them.  

“KickUp has allowed us to be more responsive to educators’ needs and expand our offerings. Whether it’s in-person or asynchronous courses, teachers can coordinate their attendance and confirmation all in one place,” says Frost. “Last summer we offered about 18 different classes or events that teachers could take. This summer we have 132. Without KickUp, I don’t know how we would have been able to manage that kind of expansion.” 

And the results are evident on the other side as well. “It’s really useful to show the school board how our work supports the Continuous School Improvement Plan [CSIP] and district focus,” says Frost. “Connecting how professional learning aligns with the CSIP, and also the quality of that professional learning, has been absolutely key. When I do my report to the board this Fall, it's going to tell the story of how all the high-quality support that teachers got directly supports our bigger goals.”