Forge On: How Vassar Public Schools Rebuilt the Way Work Moves

Projected Year 1 Impact:

“Cariina has allowed me to move from being reactive to being intentional. We’ve gone from having 'kiddie pools' in classrooms to catch roof leaks to building a 15-year strategic facilities plan. The data doesn't lie, it gives us the confidence to show the community exactly why we need support and how we’re using it. We’re finally forging on.”

Steve Clark

Superintendent, Vassar Public Schools

The Challenge

The Manual Mess: People Interacted. Systems Did Not.

Vassar, Michigan sits in the Thumb region of the state — a small rural community where the school district is one of the central institutions in town. With 750 students and 110 staff, Vassar runs lean by necessity. There's no large central office absorbing inefficiency. When something slows down, the entire community feels it.

Before Cariina, Vassar’s core district processes were scattered. Maintenance requests, technology tickets, purchasing approvals, and event support each lived in different systems or in someone's inbox, or on a desk. Work got lost. Tracking it down fell on people. Superintendent Clark spent a lot of his time sorting through folders and emails, instead of being present for his staff and students.

Vassar leadership also carried a familiar concern: after years of technology implementations that overpromise and underdeliver, staff skepticism is real. Any new system would need to fit existing district processes, not force staff to relearn how to work.

The Solution

Rebuilding How Work Moves

Vassar did not adopt Cariina to just digitize paperwork. They adopted it to fix how work moves through the district. What Vassar needed was one place where work could start, move, and finish without getting lost. Cariina gave them that structure.

Clark's guiding principle shaped the entire implementation: "Our systems drive the platform. The platform doesn’t drive our systems." Rather than asking staff to change how they worked, Cariina was built around Vassar's existing processes. Districts processes and operations now move through defined approval paths, automatically notify the right people, capture electronic signatures, and give leadership real-time visibility at every step.

A Unified District 

Existing processes were built inside Cariina’s Organizational Management System or OMS without disrupting staff routines. All district processes, tickets, requests and operations now:

• Move through defined approval paths

• Automatically notify stakeholders

• Capture signatures electronically

• Provide real-time visibility to leadership

Purchase requests that once took days now close in hours. Maintenance tickets no longer fall through the cracks. And for the first time, departments can identify bottlenecks and analyze trends rather than rely on gut feel.

The Impact

From the Inbox to the Classroom

The numbers tell part of the story but the quieter changes matter too.

Superintendent Clark spends more time in classrooms with his principals, teachers and students, and less time reacting to what landed in his inbox overnight. 

Inside departments, assumptions have been replaced by analysis. For example, Vassar now tracks behavior incidents by student, time, and event; and for the first time, patterns are now visible before they become crises.

The 15-year facilities plan may be the clearest sign of what's changed. Where Vassar once had literal kiddie pools in classrooms catching roof leaks, they now have data, a long-term strategy, and the ability to make a credible case to their community for the investments students need.

These are the kinds of outcomes that become possible when Leadership has the time and visibility to think ahead. Vassar is forging on.