About STAR Education
An award-winning, non-profit organization based in California, STAR Education brings extended educational, recreational, and enrichment programs to students in over 500 schools in 60 school districts and reaches over a million students and their families every year. Launched in the 1980s and officially incorporated in 1993 as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, STAR’s programs support and enhance the critically important work of schools in both educating students and emphasizing the importance of public school sites as vital community focal points for families, support, and learning. Through a dedicated network of over 1,200 employees, STAR has expanded from California and now also serves students and families in New York and Tennessee, offering extensive opportunities through a diverse array of programming designed to serve a wide range of educational and enrichment goals, including summer camps, community events, ecology experiences, preparatory tutoring, after-school education, and day school services.
STAR Education’s mission is to offer extended educational, recreational, and enrichment programs to students; support and enhance school curriculum; improve student achievement.
OTS and STAR Education
The flexibility of STAR Education’s service delivery model requires robust performance and functionality from their technology. The breadth and diversity of STAR’s programming schedule—which is variable day-to-day, seasonally, and by location—was causing significant technology challenges from their legacy software (Filemaker Pro) when STAR engaged OTS. In addition to performance issues, the organization was experiencing significant disruptions in operations due to technology failures in registration, accounting, participant flow, and activity management.
OTS carefully studied STAR’s existing system and needs, and then worked with STAR’s IT and accounting departments to reverse engineer their existing software one piece at a time. The OTS team isolated and separated the individual function components, redesigned each with the latest technology, and then brought them online into a cohesive, aws-based platform that now provides one streamlined, integrated system with enhanced features and limitless capacity for all of STAR’s complex accounting, registration, activity, and employee and participant management needs. Additionally, OTS designed a robust analytic function to track all of STAR’s unique data sets and provide them with invaluable, qualitative and quantitative data on operations and performance of both the organization and the participants. OTS continues to provide STAR Education with ongoing IT support and maintenance.
