Overview

When John Hassell joined Cypress-Fairbanks ISD as an internal auditor, what he saw was a 96-school district moving nearly $20 million a year through club dues, parking fees, spirit wear, and gate receipts. Almost all of it cash, with no shared format for tracking any of it.

From the inside, he recognized the pattern right away: chaos that holds together until the day it doesn’t.

Working with KEV Group’s SchoolCash platform, Hassell’s team moved $8 million to digital collection in the first year alone, brought parent adoption to 90%, and grew fundraiser revenue four-fold, from $50,000 to $200,000. That money that now goes straight to student scholarships instead of sitting in an office overnight.

 

The Challenge

Low consistency, high risk, endless manual work

Before SchoolCash, most bookkeepers pulled financial reports from the district’s PowerSchool system, then sat down and matched them by hand. It was a long, time-consuming process and it was easy for mistakes to happen. And if they did, they often wouldn’t be caught or noticed until weeks (or months) later. Plus, every school used their own spreadsheet with their own formatting, so nothing was consistent.

“Everything was manual. We ran the financial reports and we would go line-by-line with a ruler and reconcile on an Excel document.”
— Cindy Hughs, Business Services Coordinator

Counting the cash wasn’t easy either. A single fundraiser could bring in tens of thousands of dollars in bills and coins that a bookkeeper had to verify by hand before any of it went near a bank. Coin and bill counters helped, but it was still a long process.

“All this kind of chaos made us realize we needed to make a change. Not just for control, but for efficiency.”
— John Hassell, Internal Auditor and Business Services Coordinator, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD (now Executive Director of Finance, Kiona-Benton City SD)

The Solution

Start with the campuses ready for change, then let the results tell the story

Hassell’s team didn’t roll SchoolCash out to all 96 campuses at once. They started with the schools already asking for something better. Those campuses got two full days of training, with elementary, middle, and high school staff together in the same room. Every bookkeeper left with a 15-page reference booklet for their desk and a direct line to someone at the district who would actually pick up the phone.

That desk booklet did real work. Nobody had to wait on hold for a basic answer, and nobody had to feel like they were the only one who didn’t know the process.

Getting the rest of the district on board happened organically. Campuses talked to each other. Once the first schools had a few wins, Hassell put them in front of everyone else.

Principals, teachers, and bookkeepers heard about the success from people doing the same job they were.

“Hearing success stories from their peers (not just from the district office) got other campuses really excited.”
— John Hassell

Parent adoption built the same way: gradually, then all at once. Districtwide, parent adoption now stands at 90% and Cypress-Fairbanks has added SchoolCash’s point-of-sale device for concessions and gate admissions.

“We just adopted the POS device, and that’s been so helpful on campuses. A lot of parents and students don’t want to send cash to school, and volunteers or staff working someone else’s game don’t want to deal with it either.” — Cindy Hughs

The Results

Less cash sitting out and more of it for students

In the first year alone, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD moved $8 million in activity fund collections from cash to digital. Parent adoption is now at 90% districtwide. And fundraiser revenue has grown four times over, from $50,000 to $200,000, every dollar of it going to student scholarships.

The bigger change is what stopped happening. No more $20,000 or $30,000 sitting in an office safe overnight, waiting for a trip to the bank. No more grabbing a cash bag mid-fire-drill.

“Instead of having a fundraiser come to you in the form of cash, a lot of it’s now online. It’s more secure because that cash isn’t sitting out.” — Cindy Hughs

For the people running events on the ground, coaches, volunteers, staff covering someone else’s game, the change shows up less as a number and more as how the job feels.