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A chief information officer details how data has helped administrators respond to unexpected events, from a broken sewer to COVID-19.

Muskogee Public Schools has been dealing with many unexpected challenges this year, from a sewer break to providing food for the community and facing school closures due to COVID-19. As chief information officer, I’ve been fortunate to be able to put our geographic information system (GIS) to work for us, visually mapping the data from our student information system (SIS).

Being able to aggregate multiple pieces of data to make an informed decision became especially key to us earlier this year. On January 29th, a sewer broke in one of our elementary schools. You can only get to the sewer through one crawl space, so when some of the plumbing failed, we didn't know it for a while. Within a matter of a few days, we had a big issue on our hands. We thought, "Oh, wow, how are we going to move 300 kids at the drop of a hat tomorrow?"

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