Roanoke, VA – January 27, 2025 –Veracity is pleased to announce Colonial Heights Public Schools (CHPS) has selected Veracity’s Technology Management SystemTM (TMS) to further advance educational technology (edtech) management, adoption, and return on value. The Virginia district, just shy of 3,000 students, believes high quality and well-balanced education with edtech understanding requires proper fiscal, capital, and human resources support.
As the new Director of Innovative Learning (and previous Director of Technology and Learning for the division), Colleen Hirn spent the last three years building systems and processes to build awareness, increase adoption, and properly vet current and future edtech investments. As a result, Hirn built a robust database and tracking system for “everything edtech,” which spanned across multiple spreadsheets and available tools.
“With fellow colleagues’ input, I built a technology request and approval form, but the Software Vetting Committee and anyone managing, had to scroll through a giant spreadsheet to find and review them all, and there was limited access for administrators since our licenses were restricted in the free tool,” explained Hirn. “We built links, tutorials and learning resources in multiple Google Sites, Drives, and many other third-party tools. Viewing each product was clunky, and it could never do what I wanted it to do. And because it had been built mostly for the Instructional Team, it wasn’t user friendly for the Finance Team and difficult to keep updated,” Hirn added.
“Our most trusted go-to has been a giant magnetic board in our office which the IT Director can’t access (being in a different building). I went back to our rostering system attempting to improve the experience for staff, but limited categories and the lack of customization had me back at ‘square one.’ Then I realized, maybe it doesn’t make sense for me to manually build all of this,” stated Hirn.
“Colleen had invested significant time and effort into the systems and processes built, which were quite impressive (especially considering the applications available). As a result of using tools not truly designed to solve these common problems, she found herself overwhelmed with manual entry and unable to scale, creating risk for the district as the sole administrator,” shared Veracity’s Chief Revenue Officer Amy Dornton.
“Having the experience to recognize a purpose-built solution was needed and the confidence and clout to take a new direction says a lot about Colleen and her team. This type of leadership and innovation is the future for K-12 education,” concluded Dornton.
Since signing with Veracity in the fall, the CHPS team has transitioned to the Product Catalog in Veracity’s TMS, added contracts, content, and built their first workflow (for approvals). The team has also built a Public Catalog to promote transparency and trust, enabling students and guardians to view tools used during their time at CHPS.
Several staff members now form an administrative team helping oversee “everything edtech”, which includes the financial team – accessing contracts, cost reports, and tax documents and completing tasks that align with the technology team – all in a single platform.
About Colonial Heights Public Schools
Colonial Heights Public Schools, a small, welcoming school system that is a beacon for excellence and a pathway to transformative educational experiences, molds and empowers global lifelong learners through limitless equitable learning opportunities which are cultivated and enriched by a loving and highly qualified staff that works in partnership with families and the community. Based in the city of Colonial Heights, Virginia, the system is composed of three elementary schools (K-5), a middle school (6-8), a high school, and technical center (9-12).
About Veracity
Veracity was founded in January 2021 to help educational institutions gain transparency into their increasing and ever-changing portfolio of edtech applications and investments. With an influx of instructional software technologies during the pandemic, and a rapidly expanding landscape since, Veracity’s mission is to connect technology, instruction, and business office leaders through a centralized system that enables team collaboration, communication with every stakeholder (including students and parents), and informed decision making. Learn more at www.veracityvs.com.