Recently, our team met with Calgary Catholic School District’s Director of IT, John Schutte, to review progress on the Zenith project and the broader evolution of student registration across the division. The conversation explored not only what has been built, but why it matters, operationally, strategically, and system-wide.
For a school division serving nearly 67,000 students across more than 120 schools, registration is more than a seasonal administrative task. It is an operational backbone that often serves as a system-wide stress test.
Each year, thousands of students enter the system. Many are newcomers to Alberta, and some are new to Canada. Families arrive with questions, documentation, expectations, and often limited familiarity with how local education systems function. For many, the school office is the first point of contact, and the experience there shapes families' perception of the entire division.
At Calgary Catholic, John Schutte frames his role simply,
“If systems work well, students are safe, educators are supported, and parents are informed. If systems add friction, that compound shows up immediately in schools.”
When the division began examining student registration more closely, the challenge was not philosophical. It was practical.
Volume. Complexity. Time.
Kindergarten registration can generate thousands of submissions in just a few days. Thousands of new students meant thousands of forms, documents, identity checks, and address verifications. Historically, that process relied heavily on paper, photocopies, in-person visits, and manual data entry.
Staff were spending significant time managing documents and tracking down missing information. Time that could have been invested in welcoming families and helping them understand how the system works. John describes the real goal clearly:
“Staff should be spending their time explaining rights, supporting diverse learner needs, and guiding families through next steps, not filling out forms”.
The division needed registration to make services faster, accessible, and more intuitive, especially for families already comfortable managing services on their phones.
At the same time, any solution had to meet non-negotiable requirements, including:
In today’s environment, parents expect systems to respond instantly and reliably. A stalled or confusing digital experience is no longer tolerated. Those requirements shaped the project that became Zenith.
Rather than purchasing an off-the-shelf solution, replacing systems overnight or forcing staff into rigid new workflows, Calgary Catholic chose a phased, collaborative approach.
Working with Imagine Everything, the division began by focusing on foundational workflows with immediate impact, such as online registration and demographic confirmation.
Large-scale, overnight system changes are difficult in public-sector environments. They create risk, strain change management capacity, and often leave operational staff scrambling. A phased approach enabled Calgary Catholic to build functionality in stages, review it quickly, adjust as needed, and ensure the school experience remained stable.
John was quick to point out that early interface mockups provided important reassurance:
“It was immediately clear the product was being built for front office staff and school users, not for IT departments or executives.”
That design orientation mattered. Secretaries and administrative staff operate in fast-paced environments. Any additional cognitive load or unnecessary complexity shows up quickly in school offices.
The incremental development model also allowed school voices into the process. As with any Imagine Everything project, the Agile methodology was used. Feedback cycles were short. Adjustments could be made within weeks rather than years. This cadence is crucial because it reduces the risk of uncovering potentially hundreds of compounding misalignments at the end of a long development cycle.
For CIOs and IT Directors, this approach shifts the nature of both the work itself and leadership. Projects become less about procurement or vendor relationship management and more about stewarding a long-term digital strategy grounded in governance, stakeholder alignment, and operational sustainability.
While registration was the immediate pain point, Calgary Catholic’s vision extends further.
John and his team are using the Zenith project to reframe the role of a Student Information System by asking what it fundamentally means to accomplish.
“At its core, an SIS should ensure student safety and accountability. It should enable attendance tracking, assessment reporting, communication with parents, and financial transparency. It houses data that supports decision-making at both the classroom and system level.”
Zenith is being developed with this broader perspective in mind.
Registration and demographic confirmation are foundational. From there, the platform can expand into attendance workflows, financial transactions, reporting processes, and parent communication channels, without inheriting rigid architectures or the limitations and security risks associated with legacy solutions.
For student information personnel, this layered approach matters because it allows data structures and workflows to be shaped intentionally rather than a preconfigured model. It also allows districts to ensure that regulatory and contextual requirements are respected from the outset.
In Alberta and across Western Canada, divisions vary widely in size and complexity. A system that works for a 100,000-student urban district may not serve a six-school rural division. Calgary Catholic also carries faith-based requirements that many commercial systems do not accommodate. The flexibility to adapt the platform to local realities was a critical consideration.
John puts this well by pointing out the realities of the current EdTech market environment:
“Consolidation among large vendors has reduced flexibility and increased standardization.”
For district leaders seeking alternatives that respect local context without requiring full custom builds, that gap is increasingly apparent.
Zenith was designed to address that gap. Not as a one-size-fits-all platform, but as a scalable framework shaped through direct partnership with the Canadian K12 community.
An often-overlooked dimension of major technology initiatives is the conversation around data ownership and intellectual property.
Public-sector districts carry stewardship responsibilities that extend beyond operational convenience.
John is candid here about the difference between a purely transactional vendor relationship and a collaborative one.
“When districts are co-designing elements of a system, questions about where data resides, how it is accessed, and how it can be exported or transitioned become central. The ability to have direct, transparent conversations about those topics builds trust at the executive level.”
For superintendents and boards, this governance layer is as important as feature functionality.
Looking ahead, success for Zenith at Calgary Catholic will not be defined by technical metrics alone.
John Schutte describes a vision in which Zenith becomes the primary digital point of interaction between families and the division.
“Parents would access registration, confirm demographic information, review progress updates, manage payments, and communicate with schools through a single, familiar platform. The goal is for the platform to become as normalized in education as major consumer platforms are in daily life.”
Not because it is flashy, but because it is dependable and intuitive.
For CIOs and Superintendents, that aspiration aligns with a broader strategic objective: creating a digital front door that is secure, scalable, and responsive to evolving expectations.
The Zenith initiative illustrates a broader shift in how school divisions can approach core systems.
One that requires patience, sustained internal communication and requires IT leaders to engage deeply with instructional and operational stakeholders. This process is not a simple purchase-and-deploy exercise.
From John's perspective,
“This work demands ongoing conversations about strategy, alignment, and long-term outcomes.”
The approach we’re taking with the Zenith project also offers what many districts seek: influence over the tools, architecture and workflows they rely on every day.
For Calgary Catholic, online registration is just the beginning. The longer-term project is building a student information backbone that reflects the realities of their schools and the expectations of their families.
For districts rethinking their student registration or student information strategy, Calgary Catholic’s approach offers a different model: incremental, collaborative, and built for operational reality.
Our team can't wait to show you what we've been up to alongside some of the best minds in Education.