In order to fulfill our mission of graduating informed, articulate and proactive individuals of strong character, Salem Academy has invested time and resources to develop a top-of-the-line Information Management System that is coherent with our philosophy. We believe that our system, Veracross - which was developed specifically for our school with an established database development company - enchances our school's drive to success by allowing us to record, maintain, analyze, and report student, teacher and school data across many axes and in real-time.

With security, flexibility, and ease of use as our primary concerns, the Salem Academy Information Management System addresses the most imporant record management functions needed by administrators, teachers, parents, and students to holistically track and assess student performance.

Perhaps most importantly, Veracross supports frequent and high-quality communication between Salem Academy and our students' homes. Through a web-enabled system, parents and guardians using the Internet have access to updated information on their child's academic assignments, schedules, and academic performances. Families are invited to use computers in the school computer lab or home computers in order to access the system. Having access to daily updates on students empowers families to be proactively involved in their child's education, giving them the information they need to simultaneously support daily homework completion and think about long-range educational planning. Through on-going virtual communication with parents/guardians, we hope to mediate the traditional frustration parents feel when they have to wait to assess their child's progress until report cards or parent-teacher conferences when it may be, in fact, past the point of effective intervention.

Veracross serves as a demonstration site for the development of an Information Management System that can be disseminated as a strategic tool for other charter schools. In this sense, Salem Academy enjoys cutting edge technology that also allows us to fulfill one of the central missions of charter schools in general: dissemination of best practices.