Office staff were doing everything with paper & pencil and wanted to streamline their operation

The Acorn – A School for Young Children was founded by Rich and Kitty Lange in 1980, with the goal of providing the highest quality preschool education for San Antonio’s young children. They have grown to eight preschool classes and one kindergarten class, totaling a maximum of 156 kids.

Carrie Hoffman, the Office Manager, describes their center as “old school, with everything done by paper." However, she knew there was a way to streamline their attendance, paperwork, staff time sheets, and enrollment.

Immediate improvement in family engagement & tracking staff hours

The Acorn evaluated a few child care management systems, but couldn't find a platform that met their needs. Carrie's team prioritized ease of use, simplicity, & phenomenal support to help them get started.

When the team came across Playground, they knew it was the perfect fit. The Acorn switched their attendance from paper & pencil to digital signatures on the Playground mobile app. They soon after uploaded all their paperwork so families could complete them digitally through the app as well & tracked staff attendance through the system.

Playground fully replaced The Acorn's paper registration process, saving the office staff a full week of work during enrollment season. Staff no longer had to manually transcribe paper applications and manually input the data into a separate system.

Carrie also utilizes Playground's communication features to share photos, videos, and important updates with families. According to Carrie, “Parents love we post newsletter in the app and notify them via text.” It's resulted in 30% more families engaging with the weekly outreach from the preschool.

Finally, The Acorn has also been able to pay their teachers more in bonuses because Playground is helping them track time worked more accurately. Previously, teachers' time was miscalculated resulting in inaccurate bonus payouts. Now with Playground's staff timesheets, it's incredibly easy to effectively track time worked.

Resulting in happier families & teachers

“Our experience with Playground has been smooth from the start. They've been responsive and easy to work with," said Carrie. “We highly recommend Playground to any preschool.”

The Acorn is excited to continue growing and adding more features from Playground to get back time they can reinvest into their community.