Visalia Unified outlines public financial dashboard, network security upgrades and rollout of online employee evaluations

Visalia Unified School District officials told the board they will launch a public financial dashboard in the coming months, expand network security with multifactor authentication and continue rolling out an online employee performance-management system to replace a paper-based evaluation process.

The district’s Chief Business Officer, Nathan Hernandez, said the dashboard will use Open Finance inside the district’s existing Tyler Munis system to allow residents to “dive a little bit deeper into the district’s financial activity” than the district’s traditional high‑level reports. “We’re excited that we’re gonna be launching this over the next few months during this year, and we’re utilizing Open Finance,” Hernandez said. He showed a mock-up that allows drill-down from funds to departments and to individual services, using the maintenance department as an example.

The dashboard work is in a prelaunch phase. Hernandez said the site is “live” internally but not posted for public access; staff are creating a communications plan and a feedback loop to track community use and improve the display. He said the district will automate uploads so the site stays updated and that analytics will be used to monitor how frequently and how deeply community members use the tool.

Assistant Superintendent Ben Dillon led a presentation on a separate but related Theme 3 initiative: modernizing human-capital systems. Dillon said the district is replacing a paper-and-pencil evaluation process with an off-the-shelf platform selected after demonstrations and stakeholder feedback. He said a pilot that began last year started with 21 evaluators, grew to 52 evaluators who completed more than 275 evaluations during the pilot, and the district plans to launch evaluations for more than 1,600 employees this year who are due for evaluation. “We are not fully implementing this year, and we’re not even scheduled to be fully implemented this year,” Dillon said, noting training and design work remain.

Dillon summarized the goals for the digital evaluations: higher completion rates, a live dashboard for managers and employees, improved recordkeeping and the ability to extract performance data to inform targeted professional learning and coaching. He listed platforms considered, including PowerSchool Perform and TrackStar, and said integration with existing systems like Tyler Munis was a selection criterion.

Hernandez also addressed network resiliency and security. He described a recent AT&T outage that did not interrupt school operations because the district’s redundant internet system stepped in. He said the district’s cybersecurity team and consultants tested seven multifactor-authentication solutions and implemented a pilot for staff with access to sensitive financial or student records; the plan is to roll the system out to the rest of staff this year.

District leaders framed the combined efforts as part of Theme 3—organizational efficiency and effectiveness—intended to improve transparency, protect student and financial data and provide better tools for supervision and professional growth.

The board received the presentation; staff said additional rollouts, training and communications are forthcoming.

Visalia Unified provided specific implementation details during the presentation: Tyler Munis/Open Finance as the dashboard platform, a multifactor‑authentication pilot for management and sensitive-data accounts with districtwide rollout planned, and an evaluation platform that served 52 pilot evaluators who completed more than 275 evaluations and will expand to evaluations for more than 1,600 employees this year. The district also noted an early professional development cohort focused on LETRS (Science of Reading) enrolling roughly 124 K–3 teachers—about 40% of the district’s K–3 teachers—in the first cohort.

Questions from board members were taken at the end of the presentation; no formal board action on Theme 3 items was taken at this meeting.