PowerSchool roll out
The District migrated to a new enterprise software, PowerSchool. When this was pitched to the Board, they were pretty much told that they had no choice. The company that made the software they were using was bought by Pearson and Pearson stopped support of that program. They offered to help districts making the migration to Pearson's software, PowerSchool, but districts would be on their own if they wanted to move to any other software. PowerSchool would also offer a lot of attractive capabilities that were available as modules, including one that would replace The Source.
This is a VERY BIG DEAL. This software collects, tracks, and reports just about all of the information for all students throughout the system. It runs everything - schedules, grades, test scores, medical information, and more.
Unfortunately, the roll out of PowerSchool was less than ideal. Users didn't get enough training - some got none. The District didn't get much support from Pearson and the IT department didn't have the staffing they needed for the rollout. Some staff weren't even granted access to the system or the right access. That's one of the reasons that schedules were so messed up at the start of the year. That's why there was a technology blackout until days before school started and waitlists didn't move.
So where are we now? Has the training and access caught up with the need? Are those first week issues ironed out? What's going on with PowerSchool? Do people like it? Is it working well?
This is a VERY BIG DEAL. This software collects, tracks, and reports just about all of the information for all students throughout the system. It runs everything - schedules, grades, test scores, medical information, and more.
Unfortunately, the roll out of PowerSchool was less than ideal. Users didn't get enough training - some got none. The District didn't get much support from Pearson and the IT department didn't have the staffing they needed for the rollout. Some staff weren't even granted access to the system or the right access. That's one of the reasons that schedules were so messed up at the start of the year. That's why there was a technology blackout until days before school started and waitlists didn't move.
So where are we now? Has the training and access caught up with the need? Are those first week issues ironed out? What's going on with PowerSchool? Do people like it? Is it working well?
Comments
Dont we have enough local people who could design & implement a program that we could maybe use for a few years before it is thrown out?
In my opinion, what is needed here is much better leadership, particularly a carefully audited budget and a culture of only doing things that can be shown to help teachers and kids. Unfortunately, I see few signs we are going to get that.
HP
My textbook for a class that I teach was bought by Pearson from another publisher. It is a living nightmare to get any support from Pearson. The district seems to allow themselves to writhe under the jack boot of these publishers without making their own decisions and doing what is best for students in the district.
-Sad
- Grrrr
After too many failed attempts I was told to contact my school.
I wonder which school should I contact - I have students in two?
reader
The fact that it is up and running and apparently working says to me that it was fairly successful. Maybe I'm just jaded after the company got this message from a software vendor's tech support: "The guy who really knows that module left, so we don't have anyone who understands what it does now. We'll check in with the Navy, since they developed it." I wish I were making that up.
I think the district is doing good job with the limits of reduce funding and budget slashes. So typical, the community allows public school funds to be cut and then complains about the school not getting the job done.
McClure Parent
Jane
At least two full school years. Many school districts moved off esis and onto other platforms last year. Mary that other school districts game for changing over last year was better to make the transition before esis support completely went away that be stuck with nothing. Not that many people choose to continue with our schools. There is a common believe that it does not have the capability to serve a larger school District and instead of product best use by small school districts or networks of private schools.
-IMO
I hope the new Source is good enough that teachers won't feel the need to keep the real grades in Excel.
it certainly appears that the handling of this roll out could be another chapter of Advanced SPS Systems Managment 801. Make sure that individuals who are unqualified and unaccountable make snap decisions, unless you have a committee of the unqualified and unaccountable to duck decisions. Make sure key decisions points are never really figured out, except for a few which are randomly sprinkled among the unqualified and unaccountable individuals and committees so that the boondogle can really grow.
OH yeah, have we hired CONsultant people affiliated with LEV-SFC-A4E-MSFT... with no track record of implementing anything on time or on budget to tell the unaccountable how to stay behind the curtain?
TrainWreckAgain
At this point, my middle school son has access to his student account because his school gave information directly to him. I can view his info there, but I do not have a way to access the parent account or information for my other son. The new credentials have not been communicated from the district, or from either school in the back-to-school welcome packs.
My guess is that the district was supposed to handle this last spring and this fall, but hasn't done so. Now there's a misunderstanding at the individual school level as to what to communicate and how to communicate it to families.
-Frustrated
"Source and PowerSchool are down for Nightly Maintenance. Please check back after 6am."
Is this going to be every night?
Frustrated 2
Now, I can't see last years grades at all. Just this years.
For these reasons, I am disappointed at the clunky nature of Powersource. Furthermore, if the teachers find it difficult to use there will be less compliance with posting homework scores. I cannot see, based on the layout of the gradesheet, how individual homework assignments will be listed. Am I missing something? Only quarter grades are indicated which is useless to parents. Can anyone tell me how I can access grades for individual assignments? The fusion pages show assignments but not grades.
-Down with Powersource
I hope NOT! According to this pageThe Source/Powerschool is run by SPS, but Fusion is a third party company that also gathers data for the military.
How the @%!# did our kids data get punched into THAT system?! I guess it's not just CCER that wants our kids' data, Fusion even includes kids' "blog posts". Are you all okay with this? I'm inclined to tell my kid not to post anything on that site. How else do we protest something like this? Can anyone verify that Fusion is not run and managed by SPS?
HP
-Down with Powersource
I'm hoping that they're just doing night work to finish the roll-out, since they had so many problems, and that this won't continue for long. If this is really the service level for a customer-facing system, I'm appalled.
• I suspect the same lack of funding may have been part of why the Power School transition has been so rough (and part of the prior Source issues and even now the minimal Fusion support). I may be wrong but I never heard of extra staff being hired on to help – if you’re going to have a major systems overhaul affecting 1000s of employees and 100,000+ users (students & parents) it seems reasonable to me to bring on 4-6 extra IT staff for the 1-2 year transition (infrastructure, training, support, etc.). I doubt this had upper level support.
• I can’t guarantee there weren’t incompetence screw-ups along the way, but I fear the lack of IT support $$ by the district towards IT is more of a root cause. Upper level staff would much rather hire consultants/coaches to tell teachers how to teach than actually put $$ into the systems that would keep the networks running, enhance teaching grading/paperwork tracking efficiency, and provide more powerful classroom computers to actually allow technology to be an educational tool rather than a source of frustration.
• I went through several major software transitions pre-teaching. Although I like many aspects of the Source and Fusion software packages I agree the transition has been unnecessarily difficult, especially the lost August transition/preparation time. Although the national push is for $$ to only be spent in the classroom, I for one would strongly state extra $$ spent on IT support very easily translates into direct support for my classroom.
• I’m sorry Patrick, but having used the Source for a few years there simply was no reason for teachers to keep “their real grades on Excel spreadsheets”, especially as that returns grading to a black-box model hidden from students and parents. That really bothers me and actually teachers who do not keep their Source grades reasonably up to date hinder student feedback and make the rest of us look bad/lazy. Although the Source/PowerSchool/Fusion tools are just good and not great, there’s no reason not to utilize these as our best parent communication tools.
• Students “blog posts” in Fusion use anonymous names like orange parakeet (color/animal) which are randomly determined unless a student overrides their personal name prior to their 1st post. All posts must be approved by teachers for appropriateness (inappropriate words, personally identifying information) prior to their showing up. IF any personally identifying information shows up inform the teacher (and concurrently the principal if you’re concerned about a timely correction).
SPS Teacher
I have seen custom solutions built in two months, including gathering requirements and like-to-haves, and moving all users over in one night. With perhaps a few hours of middle of the night down time.
This is important.We should spend the money to make sure the IT department has developers and a DBA.
Or what about this, work with the UW comp sci department. Nice meaty project with a community service aspect.
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