Tag Archives: teachers

The Power of a Connected School System

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Schools across the country are catching their breath after a fast-moving, complex, and unpredictable 2025. The challenges were real: staffing shortages, rising special-education demands, increasingly complex compliance requirements, new cybersecurity expectations, and growing pressure to deliver personalized learning in environments where time and resources are already stretched thin.

But in the midst of it all, districts made meaningful progress. And universally, one theme stood out clearly this year: Schools that thrived the most were the ones that viewed the student journey as a connected whole and adopted systems to support that journey from end to end.

For years, student data has been fragmented, with one system being used for grades and assessment. And another for health and attendance. Another for IEPs. Another for communication. And on it went. Each tool solved a problem, but on the whole, the situation could only be described as controlled chaos.

The True Value of Connection

Districts have increasingly realized that supporting a student is not merely a series of disconnected actions. It’s a continuum, one that spans from enrollment all the way to graduation and beyond. And every part of that continuum matters:

  • A missed health alert affects attendance.
  • A missing IEP document impacts classroom support.
  • A communication gap can cause frustration among team members.
  • A siloed grading system makes early intervention virtually impossible.
  • A delay in compliance reporting can lead to legal and financial risks.

Schools that struggled this year weren’t suffering due to a lack of effort. Their struggles were largely attributed to an overabundance of tools that spoke different languages, each one adding another layer of complexity for staff already stretched too thin.

Meanwhile, districts with connected systems saw a different story emerging, in which there was less paperwork, considerable insight, improved collaboration, and timely interventions. These districts also experienced stronger family engagement and clearer visibility into each student’s whole experience.

The ability to achieve this level of connection is not realized simply by employing technology for technology’s sake. Districts that strive to enjoy success in this regard must embrace the concept of a single enterprise management system that supports every part of the district, from the teacher who needs the overarching story about a student to help ensure their academic success, to the superintendent who needs to pull and organize cohesive data that they can share with the school board.

What Schools Will Need in 2026 and Beyond

As districts plan for the year ahead, several priorities are already rising to the top:

Stronger data integration across the student lifecycle: Multiple overlapping systems with inconsistent data are no longer sustainable. In the future, districts will increasingly consolidate their technology stacks.

A renewed focus on whole-student support: Mental health concerns, chronic absenteeism, and growing special education needs demand early identification, coordinated intervention, and clear documentation, all of which depend on unified data.

Improved cybersecurity and data transparency: Families and government agencies expect clarity on how student data is collected, protected, and used. Districts will need platforms that meet modern security standards without adding complexity.

Spare time for teachers and staff: Burnout remains a real threat. Systems that streamline reporting, automate routine tasks, and eliminate duplicate entry will become essential for retaining and supporting educators.

Decision-ready dashboards that actually empower leaders: Superintendents do not need another spreadsheet; they need real-time, consolidated information. Actionable dashboards will be critical for strategic planning and resource allocation.

Why an All-in-One Enterprise System Is No Longer Optional

This year proved a simple truth: Every disconnected tool adds friction. Every connected system adds capacity.

Districts aren’t seeking more features. They’re seeking fewer obstacles, and they want tools that reduce administrative burden, not increase it. They need connected systems that simultaneously serve teachers, support staff, administrators, and families. And most importantly, they need confidence that no student will fall through the cracks because their data lives in too many places.

When we begin connecting data, we begin empowering educators. When we empower educators, we empower students. When students are empowered, communities thrive.

Here’s to a future where systems are simpler, data is clearer, educators are supported, and every student has what they need to succeed every step of the way.

Supporting Student Success: Using Data to Identify and Close Learning Gaps

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Even before the school year begins, student success is on the mind of every educator. And as we approach the holiday season, which seems to rush upon us earlier each year, most teachers are already thinking about early intervention services going into the winter break. By now, most educators have a good idea which students are struggling with their academics. By using the data your school already has access to, you can find ways to support students who are at risk of falling behind.

Identify Learning Gaps and Develop Targeted Interventions

By tracking key metrics, such as academic progress, behavior, attendance, and progress toward meeting IEP goals, educators and school districts can identify which students may need remedial help going into the holidays.

Ideas for Supporting Student Success

When teachers and SPED coordinators identify students who are falling behind, targeted interventions can make a significant difference in closing learning gaps. For example, small group instruction allows educators to focus on students with similar needs, providing tailored explanations, guided practice, and opportunities for immediate feedback. This approach helps ensure that students who might otherwise struggle in a larger classroom setting receive the support they need to catch up and keep pace with their peers. Similarly, individualized interventions, such as one-on-one sessions or focused skill-building exercises, can address specific areas where a student may be struggling, whether that’s in literacy, math, or social-emotional skills.

In addition to traditional interventions, adaptive learning tools offer a powerful way to personalize instruction at scale. These digital platforms adjust the level of difficulty, pacing, and content based on real-time student performance, ensuring that each learner is challenged without becoming frustrated.

Teachers can assign targeted modules for addressing gaps, tracking student progress, and identifying areas in which additional support is needed. By merging adaptive technology with small group or individualized instruction, educators can create a flexible, data-driven approach that meets each student where they are, helping them stay on track and achieve their learning goals.

3 Ways to Spot Learning Gaps Before Winter Break

As the winter break approaches, it’s a great time for teachers and SPED coordinators to take stock of student progress and identify in advance any learning gaps. Here are three effective ways to help spot where students may need extra support:

  • Review assessment data – Review recent quizzes, tests, and progress monitoring reports, to identify trends or areas where students are consistently struggling. Tools like Bright SPED make it easy to see patterns across your class or school.
  • Observe classroom participation – Pay attention to which students hesitate to participate, struggle with instructions, or need frequent clarification. Engagement in discussions and activities can reveal gaps that grades alone might miss.
  • Analyze IEP goals and progress – For students with individualized education plans, check to determine if they are meeting their goals on schedule. Any missed benchmarks can signal where targeted interventions or additional support are needed.

By spotting learning gaps now, teachers can implement targeted strategies before the break, helping students return refreshed and ready to succeed in the new year.

Back to School with a Brighter Vision for Education

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As the 2025–2026 school year begins, the education system continues to confront a complex landscape of teacher shortages, increased administrative burdens, growing compliance requirements, and widening tech gaps. But at Lumen Touch, we believe that with the right tools and support, schools can go back to learning, without back-to-school stress.

The Pressure Is On

Across the country, educators are grappling with staffing shortages and burnout. According to the Learning Policy Institute’s June 2025 analysis:

[Forty-eight] states plus the District of Columbia employed an estimated 365,967 teachers who were not fully certified for their teaching assignments. Thirty-one states plus the District of Columbia published data on vacancies, showing 45,582 unfilled teacher positions. Together, these estimates indicate that, at a minimum, 411,549 positions were either unfilled or filled by teachers not fully certified for their assignments, representing about 1 in 8 of all teaching positions nationally.

The impact is felt by students, administrators, and support staff, making every role in the school ecosystem harder to sustain. The struggle is real. But so are the solutions. But instead of pushing harder with the same outdated tools and systems, it’s time to work smarter and with purpose. It’s time to start reimagining how to support your schools, teachers, and students through smarter, integrated technology.

The Power to Simplify and Support

Bright SUITE, designed with the daily demands of modern education in mind, centralizes and streamlines core school operations. From student information systems to learning management and analytics, Bright SUITE gives educators and administrators a complete digital ecosystem that just works.

With Bright SUITE:

  • Teachers reclaim instructional time by reducing manual administrative tasks.
  • Administrators gain insights that drive data-informed decisions.
  • Schools stay compliant and efficient, even when resources are stretched thin.

Whether your school is juggling hybrid learning environments or managing attendance and assessments, Bright SUITE helps you do more with less and do it better.

A Lifeline for Special Education Teams

Special education teams face some of the most complex and compliance-heavy responsibilities in education today. That’s why Bright SPED exists. Bright SPED goes far beyond simply digitizing paperwork and literally transforms how SPED teams support students.

Bright SPED empowers educators with:

  • Real-time IEP tracking and documentation.
  • Automated compliance monitoring and audit support.
  • Built-in collaboration tools that connect teachers, parents, and service providers.

In a system where nothing can be missed and everything must be documented, Bright SPED delivers peace of mind and professional confidence, helping districts ensure that no student falls through the cracks.

The Future of Teaching: Reimagine, Rebuild, Reinforce

If we want a stronger future for education, then we have to invest in the people who make learning possible: teachers. And that means more than just offering higher pay (although that’s essential). It means giving educators the tools they need to thrive in today’s classrooms.

That’s what Lumen Touch is all about.

We do more than develop education software; we help shape the future of education itself. From reducing administrative overhead to improving outcomes for students with IEPs, our mission is to empower every educator, every student, and every school.

Let’s Make This the Year of Transformation

The challenges facing education aren’t going away, but neither is our commitment to navigating them. Whether this is your first year teaching or your 30th, whether you lead an entire district or support one child with unique needs, you deserve tools that elevate your work, not add to your workload.

Explore how Bright SUITE and Bright SPED can transform your school experience. Contact us today.

Go Back to School, Not Back to Stress with Bright SUITE

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July is a quiet month for most educators. Schools close, summer break begins in earnest, and teachers enjoy a bit of time away from the classroom. Just as quickly as it starts, though, the break’s over and educators are working to clear their lists and prepare for another school year and coming back to school. Administrators, on the other hand, are working hard throughout the summer to fill open positions, as teacher attrition continues to be a serious challenge.

The Pressures Teachers Face Coming Back to School

While there are many reasons teachers leave the profession, one of the main reasons is that they feel overworked and underpaid. Truthfully, the demands on teachers have continued to expand significantly over the last few decades. Teachers are increasingly being held responsible for a sizable amount of district and government paperwork. They are also responsible for looking after the physical and mental wellbeing of students while ensuring that they achieve good test scores. These pressures, combined with a number of other duties outside of the classroom, has chased away a lot of talent.

Lumen Touch Supports Teachers and Schools Coming Back to School

In order to attract and retain teachers, save money, and deliver a more powerful curriculum to students, many schools have turned to Lumen Touch. Our all-in-one education management system, Bright SUITE, is designed to help schools more effectively manage every aspect of school administration. And because the burden on teachers is reduced using Bright SUITE, they can focus their attention more on their motivation for entering the profession in the first place: having a lasting impact on the minds and lives of their students.

How Bright SUITE Makes Coming Back to School Easier

Bright SUITE is a comprehensive learning management system that helps districts and educators better serve each individual student holistically. School faculty and administrators can better manage and track their students’ educational accomplishments. And by having the ability to integrate with local health services and Medicaid billing, districts can better manage their students’ health and wellbeing, while ensuring superior student data privacy and cybersecurity.

Bright SUITE Saves Time

Our all-in-one enterprise management system creates efficiencies that help teachers with routine tasks, from attendance to reporting to testing, and allowing them to spend more time teaching and less time filling out paperwork.

Bright SUITE Improves Communication

Effective communication is vital to the educational ecosystem. The communication module included in Bright SUITE enables schools to interact with parents, students, and teachers more effectively. Features like parent portals, messaging systems, and event calendars foster collaboration, keeping stakeholders informed about important updates, events, and student progress. As communications are centralized, secure, and systemized, this takes a huge burden off teachers.

Bright SUITE Empowers Teachers

The best part about an all-in-one school information system is the transparency. Teachers can readily see student history, sync grades, and create reports that are compliant with 504 plans and IEPs. With a visual on where students are struggling, teachers can tailor their education plans and help improve their students’ chances of being successful. With access to special education modules, a full library, and modules for individual user data dashboards, Bright SUITE allows teachers to save time, improve student success rates, and benefit from access to real-time data, to make the best decision for every student. 

With Lumen Touch, districts can securely track students from early childhood through high school with one system. This total offering brings many advantages, including tremendous cost- and time-saving efficiencies while allowing students and teachers to embrace technology and accelerate the learning trajectory. Learn more

Hindsight 2020: A Year Filled with Hope

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Do you remember what you were doing a year ago today? You might have been sending the kids off to school, driving to work, or shopping for Christmas presents. You most likely weren’t running back in to grab your mask, transforming your dining room into a work-study area for your kids, or angling your laptop just right for the light and background in your bedroom to hop on yet another zoom call. A lot can change in a year. And from our perspective, it’s a year that points to the endurance of spirit, the kindness of strangers, and the ability to transform challenge into progress.

We Will Endure

We’ve worked through challenges to overcome everything from zoom bombs to Wi-Fi inequity. Along the way, we’ve learned that teachers are wonderfully committed beyond all expectation to caring for their students – and that they can get pretty creative in finding ways to do just that – like the teacher laying on the side of the road recording an ant hill for his students using a GoPro. Or the teacher who used his stimulus check to pay his students’ utility bills. Or all of the teachers who showed up this fall – in person, online, and both – still ready to give their students 100% every day.

We Are All Innovators

The saying necessity is the mother of invention has never been more accurate. From parking buses in neighborhoods to deliver WiFi to rolling out new technology to make it easier for schools to safely track and monitor student heatlh, innovative solutions have been in abundance to help students, teachers, parents, and schools have a successful year. Nowhere has that innovation been more apparent than from the scientists who have rapidly developed multiple viable vaccines.  

Hope Is Eternal

Throughout this year, amidst the tears, frustration, and loss, there has been an underlying feeling of hope. From a renewed appreciation for the essential workers in our communities to empty pet shelters across the country, good things happened in 2020. Here are some of the highlights:

Vaccines are being distributed as we speak. Our ability to endure, innovate, and maintain hope will see us through to a BRIGHTer 2021.

2020 – A Year That Has Challenged Our Prowess and Resilience

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Helen Keller said, “A bend in the road is not the end of the road… Unless you fail to make the turn.”

This has been a trying year for everyone, but we at Lumen Touch can’t help but end the year with a very bright outlook. Hats off to our partnering school districts – and educators everywhere – as they continue to make Herculean efforts to ensure that their students are taken care of and receive instruction, while we’ve simultaneously watched the edtech industry pull together to support teachers and schools in ways that were unexpected but most welcome. We all have embraced the bend in the road.

Lumen Touch has been fortunate to partner with several innovative companies, rising to the demands and extending the reach of our platform to provide urgent solutions to new challenges, using our Bright SUITE™ product line. This has dramatically reduced some of the constraints and frustrations that teachers and IT teams were unexpectedly confronted with. Two of these very valuable partnerships have helped us significantly impact schooling as we navigate unchartered waters.

The GG4L Digital Stimulus Package – a must for all school districts

Lumen Touch is proud to be one of the solutions offered in the GG4L Digital Stimulus Package, which gives GG4L member schools immediate deployment of a free, fully integrated digital transformation bundle, valued at over $2,500 per school. In addition to a district-branded portal and 60 days of access to Lumen Touch’s Bright CARE™, schools receive:

  • Reliable single sign-on School Passport across all apps
  • Safe online SchoolTube video sharing for all courses
  • Academic achievement self-diagnostic tools through Gooru’s Navigator
  • Secure GG4L Virtual Classrooms for all courses (60-day trial)
  • Actionable family engagement with native iOS/Android mobile app (60-day trial)
  • Hundreds of free online learning resources available from GG4L’s Catalyst catalog
  • Bright CARE for management of COVID-19

Better Health and Health Monitoring with Lumen Touch and Tesseract Ventures

Lumen Touch partnered with Tesseract Ventures, a fellow Kansas City-based technology company. Using Tesseract’s PRISM™ technology, Lumen Touch can issue badges for students, allowing the necessary tracking and tracing information to be collected while prioritizing student safety and privacy by shielding individual data from anyone without proper authorization.

Bright CARE’s tools include:

  • Temperature tracking and contact tracing
  • Tracking of COVID-19 testing
  • Monitoring of and alerting on social distancing
  • Summary of medical conditions and injuries
  • District-wide summary of immunization error dates
  • Immunization summary report by type and exemption (to include COVID-19 vaccination)

Kansas City is being recognized as a hot spot for education technology prowess. We are all better together to build an education platform that fills jobs with market-value assets – that is, students succeeding in a new learning environment. Lumen Touch and Tesseract are happy together and want to invite others to the table to develop the future in education.

– Dr. John Vandewalle

As 2021 draws near, we are grateful to have partners like these to help us better serve our schools and communities. All of us at Lumen Touch wish you a happy and safe holiday season and a prosperous 2021.