The first full week of March is designated as Classified Employee Appreciation Week. At Clackamas ESD alone, we have more than 50 types of classified jobs. These are people who touch every corner of our agency’s work and the districts we support, from providing hands-on help to teachers, children and families, to filling endless behind-the-scenes roles to keep buildings and teams safe, cared for and high-functioning.
This Classified Employee Appreciation Week, we’re highlighting five of our more than 250 classified staff members and contractors, to provide a peek into the diverse ways this large group of employees lives our mission of service. We appreciate our entire classified team and the meaningful work they do.
Dimple Doherty is a student information systems data analyst at Clackamas Education Service District. Part systems analyst and designer and part data analyst, Dimple creates custom data solutions for the unique needs of Clackamas County school districts and helps them analyze their data. Dimple also serves on statewide advisory groups on behalf of CESD-hosted districts in order to support their needs with required state reporting.
Dimple enjoys using her bachelor of science in computer science degree to be of service to our agency and districts.
“It feels good to be able to help out, to be able to make our districts happy and make their lives easier,” she says.
Dimple specializes primarily in Synergy, a student information system software used by most of Clackamas County’s school districts. Synergy houses nearly all aspects of a district’s demographic, instructional and student service data used for day-to-day school operations. It’s also the tool districts use to complete mandatory state reporting requirements of the Oregon Department of Education.
“When the district needs changes and solutions are not readily available, we customize our current system to accommodate their needs,” says Dimple. “We create custom reports to provide our clients an easier way to get the information they need instead of running multiple reports, combining them and doing calculations separately. We create new screens to provide our districts a way to track their data in one system instead of using spreadsheets that do not sync up.”
The world changed suddenly and dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic — including our schools’ data needs. Dimple and her colleagues were able to respond quickly to our districts’ evolving needs.
“We moved with our districts, creating solutions for their cohorting needs, class check in for attendance and symptoms screening to assist with contact tracing. Requirements were moving so quickly that we had to think outside the box and make things work for our districts,” Dimple recalls.
Dimple swiftly built systems for tracking hybrid schedules, cohorts, synchronous and asynchronous learning, COVID symptoms, health screenings and vaccinations that allowed teachers and school administrators to pull accurate information with the touch of a button.
“We were pushing out weekly changes,” Dimple reports. “When something was missing, we made a change right away and implemented it. So we were making improvements even daily.
“It was big. It was challenging. It was fun because my innovation made a difference in a time of need.”
A Clackamas ESD employee since 2011, Dimple has stayed at Clackamas ESD because the technology services we provide have room for innovation and give her space to grow and be creative.
“I love my job,” Dimple says. “It’s challenging. It’s exciting. And it fulfills me.”
When she’s not programming custom data solutions, Dimple enjoys spending time with her family outdoors camping, hiking, skiing, and cheering on her two sons on the baseball field. Though she admits she sometimes has trouble “turning off” her natural interest in solving problems.
“I’m a solution maker. I find ways to fix things. Sometimes my husband tells me, ‘I don’t want solutions! I just want you to hear this,’” Dimple jokes.
