No Smoke, No Fire, No Problem
“Small School. Big World.” Such is the welcome on the web site of Stoneleigh-Burnham School, in Greenfield, Massachusetts, so named in 1968 after the evolutionary mergers over 100 years of five different girls schools. Stoneleigh-Burnham is a boarding and day school for girls in grades 7–12 and PG. Through rigorous academics (including a vibrant debate and public speaking program), arts and athletics, Stoneleigh-Burnam School aims to ignite a sense of self and spark involvement in a global community. 
Our Mission
Stoneleigh-Burnham School is an academic community that inspires girls to pursue meaningful lives based on honor, respect and intellectual curiosity. Each student is challenged to discover her best self and graduate with confidence to think independently and act ethically, secure in the knowledge that her voice will be heard.
Technology Director Tod Pleasant, a self-described “fix everything guy,” has worked at Stoneleigh-Burnham for 15 years; he keeps watch over technology school-wide, and, like all tech directors, spends time “putting out fires.” Like all tech directors, Tod likes having effective, reliable systems in place.
“inRESONANCE solutions require so little attention. They are well developed, mature, they behave themselves,” Pleasant explains. He speaks from experience: Stoneleigh-Burnham is one of iR’s earliest clients.
It was 1999. Pleasant knew of Kevin McAllister’s work (founder and CEO of inRESONANCE) through the ISED listserv. As Director of Technology at Loomis Chaffee School for 15 years, and a lead member of the technology committee for the Connecticut Association of Independent Schools (CAIS) through the 1990s, McAllister had been active in assisting other New England schools in developing their long range technology plans. In fact, McAllister had consulted with Stoneleigh-Burnham on their technology plan nearly a decade earlier.
“Kevin was just forming inRESONANCE at the time. While Kevin was here installing his database solutions, we chatted about his new company and his search for a talented FileMaker developer.” Would Tod be interested, McAllister inquired?
“My response was, ‘No, but you should talk to Charlie Bailey.’” Charlie Bailey, PhD Chemistry professor and husband of a Stoneleigh-Burnham faculty member, was just finishing a limited data project for the school’s development office. Charlie did, of course, join iR and today leads iR’s product development team. 
What was the data challenge in 1999?
“We were on a Blackbaud system that was not doing well for us. We had a combination of data—Blackbaud in Admissions and some records we were keeping by hand in the Registrar’s office. This combination was not serving us. I got in touch with Kevin and started talks with him about our database needs.
“So we started with iR databases before they were named PORTAL and KEYSTONE, and we never looked back.
“At the time, no one made systems with considerations for schools our size. It seemed we’d have to spend a lot of money for a system designed for a school of 1000 kids or more. We spent so much time trying to get it to work, but it just didn’t suit us.
“The scheduling options didn’t factor because of the difference in the number of the classes we offered versus what was integrated into the package. At the time, Senior Systems pitched us something crazy. We found ourselves saying, ‘We don’t need this. But we do need something that works the way we do.’ We decided we had to build our own or get someone to build it for us.
“I had played with FileMaker, but I was a one-person department. I learned enough to get by in everything. In fact, most of what I know is obsolete: the operating systems I know go back 25 years. I wish I could purge those things from my head!
“You guys are my brains.
“We’ve migrated three times over 10 years. Each time, migration was pretty easy. We had some custom reports to move. We have not changed the iR solutions that much; we’ve come in below the cost estimate every time. We’ve made very good use of the solutions out-of-the-box, without drastic changes. iR’s development has dovetailed with our needs. iR works with a lot of similar schools and they were not trying to pitch us something we did not need. PORTAL and KEYSTONE have worked well for us just as they are.
“The people in Admissions and the Academic Dean’s office/Registrar have done their own in-house training, or they’ve gone to iRU, just up the road. I attended one iRU, the first iRU, in Florida, in 2000. We were there, at the center of the universe, when Al Gore lost.
“Everyone here is doing fine with PORTAL and KEYSTONE. It’s how we do what we do. Everyone here working with the iR solutions has come in since the system was installed. Most have found it intuitive and easy to get used to, even without training. It takes a few hours instruction from someone internally to get a new person up to speed. We still have Blackbaud on campus, and such is not the case with Blackbaud. inRESONANCE is very intuitive. We make changes when we need to; we get together and talk. inRESONANCE has anticipated so much of what we need to do, we have not felt the need to customize much. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel.”
What would you say to someone considering inRESONANCE solutions?
“I tell people when you work with inRESONANCE, you work with the actual people who develop and maintain the solutions. You will continue to deal with the same people over time, and you’ll get answers to your questions. It’s hard on a school when productivity slips because you have one issue you’re waiting to solve. A lot of our problems have been of our own making: we added a middle school six years ago. At the time, we thought the middle school was going to be separate, off the system. Then we added it to the system. We weren’t going to integrate the grading, but then we wanted to. iR worked with us on this, we came up with a solution together. The only problems ever are a matter of timing, we always seem to need something at your busiest point.
“iR had some bumps a few years ago, it was a little hard getting answers during that period of your restructuring. Charlie and Kevin said to just hang in there. We did, and iR did. This is the little company that could.”
“It has been an excellent association. I have a very thick iR file of emails here. Sometimes it strikes me, it has been so easy for so long, I take it for granted. PORTAL and KEYSTONE just do what they are supposed to do, and I can devote my attention to the smoke that’s coming out somewhere else.”
Learn more about Stoneleigh-Burnham School.
And just for fun: Tod Pleasant is half of the creative team producing “Regular Joes” photo-stories for the GI Joe Collectors Club monthly newsletter. These hilarious photo comics feature Hasbro action figures well-known to anyone who has ever been a kid. See “Regular Joes” at this link.
