With more than 57,000 students, Granite School District in Salt Lake City is one of the largest districts in Utah. The district had long used paper-and-pencil forms for their Student Support Process (SSP), but despite educators’ comfort with the system, the district was beginning to realize its limitations.
When former superintendent Rich Nye joined in 2021, he brought experience with Panorama Education from a successful implementation in Ogden School District. With buy-in from the superintendent and board approval, the district could begin a multi-year rollout of Panorama.
We spoke to Angie Jones, Associate Director of College & Career Readiness, to learn about Granite’s approach to adopting new technology by integrating with existing workflows. The district’s intentional implementation has led to significant time-saving for educators and deeper, more impactful conversations to improve student outcomes.
Challenges
- Granite relied on a paper-based student support process that involved manual effort and made progress monitoring difficult.
- The district needed to integrate new technology into existing workflows, not replace them.
- Educators wanted to understand the purpose behind a new platform, not just how to use it.
- Data lived across paper and spreadsheets, so there was no comprehensive, real-time view of students.
Solution
Results
- Schools report time savings with one platform replacing multiple systems and automatic SIS integration reducing duplicate work.
- Educators use Panorama in PLCs to identify at-risk students earlier, so no one falls through the cracks.
- Educators now have deeper conversations about students, driven by stronger data.
- Teams can monitor student progress more consistently, with clear visibility into interventions and when to adjust support.
- Strong positive feedback led to early expansion to all teachers.
Challenges
For many years, Granite School District relied on a well-established student support process built around “rainbow forms,” a color-coded, paper-based system. While educators were familiar and comfortable with the process, it had some drawbacks. Gathering data by hand involved a lot of manual work, and progress monitoring was a challenge with no easy way to see trends or ensure consistent follow-up.
Because documentation lived across paper forms, spreadsheets, and disconnected tools, educators struggled to track student progress over time and access a complete picture of each student. Conversations about students were often narrowly focused on a single issue rather than including the broader context.
Despite these challenges, Granite's student support process was strong and centralized. Leaders did not want to adopt a new tool that would simply replace what was already working. Instead, the district prioritized integrating a new system into existing workflows. District leadership wanted all student support documentation to be housed in their student information system (SIS), which meant that any new tool had to sync with existing technology.
Beyond the technical side, the district also struggled with building educator buy-in without disrupting deeply ingrained workflows. “I think the harder part isn’t so much a new tool itself,” Jones said. “It’s the philosophy behind why we would use the tool and how we would use the tool.”
Solution
In 2021, Granite rolled out Panorama with a 31-school pilot, a complex undertaking that required coordination across a large and diverse set of schools. The district’s goals for the implementation spanned from improving students’ sense of belonging and graduation rates to keeping a closer eye on student progress.
To ease concerns and grow buy-in naturally, Granite adopted a deliberate, multi-year cohort rollout model. Student support teams gained access to Panorama first, with access expanded year by year to build internal experts in each school. Jones worked closely with the Panorama team to ensure the platform could fit their needs to reduce friction for educators.
To build understanding of the “why” behind the Panorama rollout, Jones led the charge in supporting the implementation. She, along with an MTSS Leadership Committee, put together an MTSS handbook and a rollout tracker to set up training cohorts and share expectations. The district invested time in training on Panorama so educators would feel comfortable and empowered to use the tool once they gained access.
Recently, the district worked to integrate Panorama with its SIS to ensure that documentation could flow between platforms. With this integration, educators could continue using familiar processes like rainbow forms, now enhanced by real-time data. The district’s approach of adopting a new tool within existing workflows satisfied both the enthusiastic early adopters and those who needed support with the change.
Results
Schools using Panorama report significant time savings from having all of their data in one place. “They're not bouncing from platform to platform to try to find all the data. It's right there,” Jones said. “Now you can just go into Panorama, and it automatically pulls everything over to our SIS system.”
Because the data is all connected, administrators and student support teams can have deeper, data-driven conversations. Before Panorama, if a student was struggling with math, support teams would only discuss the student’s math scores. Now with all this integrated data, educators can gain a better understanding of how academics connect to attendance, behavior, and sense of belonging.
Educators are using Panorama in PLCs as an early warning system to identify at-risk students proactively. “We are always trying to catch students before they're in the [intervention] process, but with Panorama, it's easier to look at the data and say, ‘Okay, who are my kids who are trending down?’ Because the data is at your fingertips and you can sort and filter so quickly, it makes those conversations easier and more prevalent,” Jones said.
The data-driven opportunities seem endless for Granite. “We have lots of people using [Panorama] in some really creative ways,” Jones said. Counselors use it for state-required data projects, administrators use it for Continual Improvement Plan (CIP) goal setting, and one school identified a gender-specific belonging gap and brought in outside support for girls. “Panorama has helped our district really understand the student support process in a deeper way.”
The platform has earned strong support from educators across roles. “We only hear positive things about it anytime we're out and about—whether from an Administrator or members of the school support staff,” Jones said. All teachers now have access (one year ahead of the original schedule) due to school-level demand. The district strategic plan now formally includes Panorama and supporting student sense of belonging.
Granite’s journey shows that successful implementation builds upon what already works, instead of replacing it. By aligning new technology with existing systems, investing in thoughtful rollout strategies, and focusing on the purpose behind the work, the district has created a more connected, proactive, and student-centered approach to support.
