The head teacher in Gębice spent six weeks every year printing ID cards for seven schools across gmina Mogilno. We automated it - now it takes minutes.
May 18, 2026
Context: government mandate requiring plastic photo ID cards for all students, effective July 2024
Result: six weeks of manual work per school year reduced to a single click
When the Polish government made plastic photo ID cards mandatory for all students in July 2024, schools had two options: pay to outsource the printing, or invest in their own card printer. Jacek Szalaty, head teacher at the Primary School in Gębice, chose the printer - and with it, took on printing cards for all seven schools in gmina Mogilno.
Each September, as the new school year began and new students needed their IDs, the data arrived from every school the same way: an Excel spreadsheet and a folder of student photos packed into a ZIP archive. Jacek would open the software that came with the printer and start entering records by hand. It wasn’t designed for non-technical users. I work in IT and even I found it frustrating to use - for Jacek, it was on another level entirely.
- Name, ID number, class, photo - typed manually for every student
- Photos often arrived in the wrong format - photo editor required before anything could be uploaded
- A typo meant throwing away a card and starting over
- Seven schools each sending data in their own format, at the last moment
A month and a half of his time, every September.
The problem wasn’t the printer - it was everything before it.
The regulation was new, but the chaos was immediate. Each school sent data at the last moment, in whatever format they used. Errors only surfaced once Jacek was already deep in the process. A better application wouldn’t have helped - the problem was in how data was collected in the first place.
I’ve been providing IT support to schools in gmina Mogilno for years. When I saw the full picture, the answer seemed obvious: each school should handle its own students’ data directly, so Jacek would only ever deal with cards that were already correct and ready to print.
We built legitymacje.online around that idea.
Each school gets its own panel. Staff add students by filling in a short form - name, ID number, photo. The system checks the photo automatically: wrong format or file size is flagged straight away, so schools fix their own mistakes before anything reaches Jacek’s queue. When everything looks good, one click sends it to the print queue.
Jacek logs in, sees a single list from all seven schools, and clicks “generate batch.” He downloads the file and loads it into the printer. That’s it.
Six weeks of annual data entry and photo fixing - replaced by a single click
No new hardware, no outsourcing. Student data stays within the EU, and schools are covered for GDPR without any extra paperwork.
“I figured this was just going to be the new normal - weeks of clicking through that application, checking every photo, fixing names. Now I generate the file and load it into the printer. Honestly, I kept waiting for something to go wrong the first time.”
- Jacek Szalaty, Head Teacher, Primary School in Gębice
If your school district is dealing with something similar - get in touch. We know what this looks like from the inside.
About the author
Mikołaj Herwart
Software engineer with 8+ years of building products people actually use. By day he ships hospitality software used by hotels across Europe; with us, he leads sales, talks to clients, validates ideas, and prototypes solutions. He's the person you talk to when you want to know if your idea is worth building.