Overview
Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS), in the Washington, D.C. area, is the 11th largest school district in the U.S. It serves 184,000 students with more than 23,000 employees across 200+ schools and facilities, and it manages about 180,000 devices, including Chromebooks and iPads. Staff file roughly 250,000 IT service requests a year. The district wanted faster IT support in classrooms.
How a request used to work
It depended on the school. At one, a teacher phoned the help desk. At another, they filled in a paper form. At a third, they sent an email. Anything that needed approval landed in an administrator’s inbox and waited there.
A teacher with a broken laptop worked around it for days. A classroom waiting for new devices could wait two weeks. Central IT couldn’t say how many requests were open, which schools were behind or where things got stuck, because the answers were scattered across email threads and paper logs.
What FCPS built
FCPS kept BMC Remedy as its IT service management system and put Kinetic in front of it.
- One catalog for the whole district. Every school and department uses the same portal for the same requests.
- Approvals that route themselves. Requests go to the right approver based on type, cost and district rules, with the details attached.
- Forms that fit the person. Each form shows only the fields that matter for the requester’s role, location and request type, and sends the result to the right fulfillment team.
- Fulfillment stays in Remedy. IT teams keep working in the tool they know. Kinetic passes each request into Remedy and tracks it to completion.
A second application for student devices
Once the catalog was running, FCPS built its next application on the same platform: an asset management system for the district’s student devices. It didn’t need a new purchase or a new system. The team worked on the platform that already ran the district’s forms and approvals, and delivered the asset system within a three-month summer window, between one school year and the next.
- Check-out and check-in. Devices go out at the start of the school year and come back at the end.
- Barcode scanning. Staff process devices by scanning their barcodes.
- Device-to-student assignment. The system tracks which student has which device.
- Funding-source tracking. Each device is tied to the grant or vendor source that paid for it, which is what grant compliance reporting needs.
- Bi-annual inventory. The twice-yearly count runs from the same records, replacing manual spreadsheets.
- Signature capture. Sign-offs are captured digitally and stored with the device assignment, replacing paper forms kept in folders.
School Board members now have real-time visibility into device data, and grant documentation is available on demand.
Results
- Fulfillment time cut by 50%. Requests move from submission to completion twice as fast.
- Approvals in minutes, not days. Routing is automatic, so requests no longer wait in inboxes.
- Device distribution 85% faster. Getting equipment into classrooms went from about 2 weeks to about 3 days.
- Twice the service catalog. The district doubled the number of services on offer.
- 250,000+ requests a year on one process, across 200+ locations.
- A second application in one summer. The student device system went live within a three-month summer window.
- Recognized by ACT-IAC. The program was named a finalist for ACT-IAC’s Excellence.gov Award.
Why FCPS chose to build on top
FCPS had plenty of systems already: BMC Remedy for IT service management, procurement tools for equipment, and approval habits that varied by school. Replacing any of them would have meant a long procurement, a migration, and retraining hundreds of staff during a school year. The district needed one consistent front door for requests, routed into the tools its fulfillment teams already used.
Before and after
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| How requests arrive | Phone, email and paper forms | One digital catalog |
| Approvals | Days in email inboxes | Minutes, routed automatically |
| Fulfillment time | Baseline | 50% faster |
| Device distribution | About 2 weeks | About 3 days (85% faster) |
| Tracking | Manual and scattered | District-wide dashboards |
| Locations | Different process at each school | 200+ on one catalog |
| Device sign-offs | Paper forms stored in folders | Digital signatures stored with each assignment |
| Device inventory | Manual spreadsheets reconciled across systems | One record per device, tied to student and funding source |
What you can build next
FCPS started with IT requests and moved on to student devices. Each application after the first reuses the forms and workflows already in place, so a district’s third one starts further along than its second. See how Kinetic handles student and faculty service delivery in education, or how state agencies and local governments use it for constituent services in state and local government.