It is virtually impossible to meet K-12 record management compliance of paper-based student records. With an electronic record management system, you can set access controls to restrict who can view, read, change, or act upon confidential student records while meeting retention requirements of every document in storage.

The following 5 tips will help you store, backup, protect, and maintain privacy requirements of student records while also improving the efficiency of your facility:

1. Back Up Records in Multiple Locations

Paper records are vulnerable to natural disasters such as hurricanes, floods, fires, and tornadoes. You may think these natural disasters are rare, but in 2015 alone, there were 24 major natural disasters that cost millions in damages and affected hundreds of United States schools.

Planning for what Mother Nature may have in store for us in the future is easy with an electronic records management system. Student records can be filed and stored on secured servers located all across the United States. While your individual computers may be demolished in a disaster, your records remain unharmed.

2. Maintain FERPA Privacy Compliance

The Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. Paper file storage makes it nearly impossible to comply with the strict privacy requirements of K-12 records management.

With 9.7% of education industry data breaches resulting from exposed records, your district needs to be proactive in protecting the privacy of students. School file rooms are rarely locked, only 35% have cameras in place, and there is generally no tracking system in place allowing a person to enter and remove a file. Whether through malicious intent or, more commonly, forgetfulness - student files may never make it back to their proper storage location, forever lost and vulnerable to anyone who happens to find them.

3. Meet State Retention Laws for Archived Records

States have thousands of retention laws and settings related to the archival of student records. If maintaining paper-based student records, the process of reviewing each record annually to determine whether it needs to be archived or disposed is time-consuming and inefficient. As a result, many school districts decide to keep everything, but the legal liability of maintaining such a large volume of archived records is unnecessary.

Electronic records management systems monitor retention at the document level, keeping only what must be kept, and automatically disposing of records once they’ve fulfilled their retention schedule.

4. Maintain Access Control

A key benefit to electronic K-12 records management systems is the control you’ll have over each and every document and record. Even in schools maintaining paper records, there is a lot of student and staff information being saved in formats such as Microsoft Word or Excel, and freely shared and emailed among staff members with no tracking systems in place. It is easy for unauthorized individuals to obtain and extract sensitive information.

With an electronic management of student files, access can be set based on staff role, digitized documents can be encrypted and password protected, and shared files can be logged and given time specific access.

5. Save Time and Money Accessing Retained Files

Don’t let the costs of implementing a digital student record system fool you. Paper storage can be up to 10 times more expensive than digital record management. With paper-based storage systems, you’re spending money on copy supplies and file cabinets. You can spend up to 8 times as long to file and locate paper copies of student records compared to digital storage, and as much as $120 in labor costs to search for every misfiled or lost document. Not to mention the amount of physical space you need for each file cabinet!