Palmerton Area School District is moving to an online program to manage its consistently increasing number of facility use requests.

During a board workshop Tuesday night, facilities and curriculum departments secretary Angela Heiland said the district currently uses a paper-based scheduling system for “hundreds if not thousands” of facility use requests it gets in a year.

“When someone wants to schedule a facility now, there is a chain of approvals that can require photocopies distributed to up to eight people,” Heiland said. “We’re in the early stages right now of migrating to an online software system called School Dude.”

The software is provided by Dude Solutions, which Heiland said is currently used in almost half of all Pennsylvania public school districts.

A cloud-based solution, it would involve one central online district calendar and facility use requests could also be approved online. Requesters would get automatic notifications as the approval process moves forward.

“We’re estimating, just in paper, this would save us one to three cases a year,” Heiland said. “It would also take the review and approval process from about two weeks to maybe two days to complete.”

Heiland said Northern Lehigh is one of the closest school districts to use a Dude Solutions product.

An initial rollout is underway with principals and teachers next on the list for access by the time summer hits. The district will then turn its attention to the community, which will be able to make online requests.

“We’re anticipating full rollout for the 2018-19 school year,” Heiland said.