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From the comfort of their own home or even from their hotel room on a family vacation, some Pleasanton school parents were able to register their child online, make required school payments and donate money through a new application called “Future Fund” — which was designed by Pleasanton parent, Darian Shimy.
“I wanted to eliminate the need to come to school,” Shimy said.
Shimy’s donation application was used by eight Pleasanton Unified schools on registration day: Donlan Elementary, Hart Middle School, Harvest Park Middle School, Hearst Elementary, Lydiksen Elementary, Pleasanton Middle School, Valley View Elementary and Walnut Grove Elementary.
Nearly all school sites using Future Fund saw an increase in fundraising, some with an increase of over 50% from last year, said Andrea Stokoe, Pleasanton Partnerships in Education (PPIE) Foundation board member and registration committee chair.
This support was a contributing factor in PPIE’s record $330,000 of donations received during registration.
“Future Fund transformed registration at many of our schools. Next year, I would imagine most of our schools will be interested in utilizing Future Fund,” said Pleasanton schools superintendent Parvin Ahmadi.
Prior to registration day, parents received a registration code for the Future Fund website — also available on mobile devices. After logging in, parents simply turned in required school documents and payments, and then were able to donate to PPIE or parent clubs.
According to Shimy, each school’s Future Fund was different to accommodate the needs of each school. Some of the application’s features included buying P.E. clothes or yearbooks, and signing up for volunteer opportunities, Parent Teacher Association or school newsletters.
He said he came up with the idea of Future Fund after asking how to give money and support school programs with very little time and energy.
Shimy then presented his idea at a Parent Club Council (PCC) meeting with the schools’ Parent Teacher Association presidents last November.
“Everyone liked it, and it grew from there,” Shimy said.
The schools that chose to use Future Fund worked with him to provide feedback about what their specific school site was looking for with the application.
The biggest challenges he faced while building Future Fund, he said, was dealing with schools’ differing registration processes or the different features schools wanted on their application.
“Right when I think I got it down, I had to redo something,” Shimy said. “A lot of time was spent on building the application because I wanted parents to have an optimal experience while using it.”
The whole building process began around February and continued throughout the summer.
“It was a lot of late nights,” Shimy said. On top of working as vice president of engineering at a website-building service, Shimy spent approximately 20 hours a week on Future Fund.
This work included setting up how credit cards would be processed, adding Spanish and Chinese language translations, how parents could submit required forms and making sure the application worked on mobile devices.
“Darian transformed a necessary and cumbersome process into a simplified, streamlined one — not only for parents of students in our school district, but also for the school sites and organizations who support them, such as PPIE,” PPIE executive director Susan Hayes said.
The success of Future Fund far exceeded Shimy’s expectations.
“I never expected any of this,” he said. “I never expected to even be talking to you (the Pleasanton Weekly) about Future Fund.”
According to Hayes, after registration week, Shimy presented the outcomes to the PCC — with many of the participating schools enthusiastic and interested in continuing the use of Future Fund. The schools that didn’t use it expressed interest in using it next year, Hayes said.
Shimy stated that parents are still using it, and he’s continuously making it more user-friendly and working on adding new features — such as online signatures and uploading emergency cards and proof of residency.
He has offered to continue making Future Fund available to schools free of charge.
“It’s my way of giving back to the school and community,” Shimy said.
Hero FYI:
* In September, the Pleasanton school board recognized Shimy as a “community member whose efforts benefit every student.”
* 88% of the parents at participating schools registered their students online.
* Many of those schools saw 30-50% increases in donations with Future Fund.
* Average online registration completion time was 6.5 minutes, according to Shimy.
* One of the schools had Shimy create a way for parents to pay so their child’s name could show up on the “Birthday Board” outside the school.
* Shimy has two daughters: one at Walnut Grove and one at Harvest Park.
* Shimy holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science.
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Darian, Thank you for your time and effort in making this happen. I can not wait for it to come to Mohr Elementary as I know you were working with our PTA President to implement it. Congratulations on being a Tri-Valley Hero. Well deserved!
Please bring it to Amador!!!
Many thanks to Mr. Shimy for bringing much needed modernization to the district. And that donations increased as a result is even better. Please bring it to the high schools as soon as you can. We need it too!
We’ve used two electronic registration forms at Hearst for the last two school years. I used and liked both of them.
I also liked the electronic directories. The downside? The directory from the 2013-2014 school year disappeared when Hearst didn’t reuse that system. That left us without anything other than the 2012-2013 and older print directories for the first couple of months of the school year. That’s fine for some people, not fine for people who moved into the school during 2013-14 and 2014-15. When planning a birthday party, I had to pester teachers to put me in touch with a few students’ parents. It would be nice if we could either ensure continual availability of a prior year’s directory or make the current years’s info available to parents sooner.
My daughter goes to Hart and what a big difference the online system makes. It’s much easier and convienient to do
My kids go to Walnut Grove and the online registration was WONDERFUL!! A huge thanks to Darian for designing and implementing this system. He is awesome!We should be high tech – thanks for helping our schools along!
Wish Dublin had a process like this!! What a wonderful gift to the community.
This is great news! Online registration is long overdue. I don’t have kids in school anymore, but clearly remember the pain of walk-through registration every year. Well done, Darian. Glad you are being recognized for your fantastic work!!
The only time it saved us was we didn’t have to pick up the packet. Still had to wait and walk thru the hour plus long walk through, still got checked and asked for more money, donations and contributions. Not really a game changer.
Really useful but a hero? We may need to redefine that concept. Helpful tool for people but hardly a life saver….
Livermore has been using online registration for a years. Glad to see that it is coming to Pleasanton! Thank you.
The reason it isn’t brought to Amador is because as you go from station to station you learn about various and sundry groups on the campus and can partake in the purchasing of many items to help support those clubs or teams or groups. There was a parent that tried to bring online registration 6-7 years ago. She and one of the Dads automated PTA and wrote a program for PTA and the phone book. It was all done online for at least 3 years. There was even an App that you could have on your phone with a phone book for the school.
It was nice while it lasted! Where did that mom go? Why isn’t it still available?