The Cisco Center started utilizing brightwheel in 2024 as their main childcare management service. This enabled the center to provide families with real-time messaging and many other features that previously were manual processes, such as invoices and end of year tax statements. They now use brightwheel in many areas (billing, communication, sharing photos, forms, as well as check in/out) 

Now the downside to this system, is it requires a tablet or smartphone to operate. The Cisco Center received a donation of iPads around 2015-2018, but those devices are no longer receiving updates, and the brightwheel application is no longer supported on these devices.

We believes that in order for a child to achieve the best outcomes, communication with their families is key. Upgrading our technology will allow for the center to provide a much deeper involvement between the center and families. While we have slowly introduced more use of the brightwheel app to our daily operations, there is still a lot of other features we do not currently utilize due to the lack of devices to run the app.

The largest impact your donation will be felt is in drop off and pickup area by ensuring there is always a tablet available for parents to sign their child in and out of the center. With our last tablet no longer being supported, staff now must manually check students in/out after verifying the parent. This will result in possible longer wait times, but also makes it harder when others pick up a child.

With your donation, we plan to replace this outdated tablet first to continue to provide a digital check in/out experience, but we also are planning to use any donations towards additional devices for staff to use in the classrooms. These additional devices would allow for more communication with parents and sharing of their Childs day-to-day activities.