It appears there are two major software projects that took place over the summer (or one). The NASD is shutting down the Sapphire Web Portal and replacing it with the PowerSchool Parent Portal and the former scheduling software has apparently been replaced by a new system. Both would have had to have been significant IT projects.
Student Portal
I posted the other day about the school announcement with the subject, “NASD No Longer Using Sapphire Parent Web Portal”. The announcement is a single sentence, “The Nazareth Area School District will be providing more information shortly on the new PowerSchool Parent Web Portal.”
I did find this within a page for the Department of Educational Technology “New Parent Web Portal Information: The NASD will no longer be using the Sapphire Parent Web Portal. The district is in the process of moving to a new Parent Web Portal through PowerSchool, but this will not be open for parents AT LEAST through the first trimester. Depending on implementation, it may be longer. The district will be providing more information shortly.”
I’ve not used the system (elementary was not yet supported), but comments on the post seemed to indicate the system worked when the teachers used it as a part of their daily routine. I believe this system was in place for about two years. The plan was to deploy at HS and work down to elementary. Now prior to completing full implementation, a decision has been made to switch to another system.
I’d imagine, like any enterprise system, these are costly. There is the base cost, licensing, training, installation, maintenance, and then the time consumed by many individuals throughout the process. To switch, there are added costs in determining how to transition from the old to the new and how to convert the data. Anyone who has worked with databases of any size, can appreciate the challenges (and costs) of converting data from one system to another. Significant testing must take place to ensure the integrity of the data once converted.
On the District web site’s IT Infrastructure page, PowerSchool is listed as the Student Information System. PowerSchool has been in existence for twelve years (visit the corporate site here). The information I found on the system speaks highly of it. I found little related to purchase cost or implementation, but annual hosting and maintenance is based on number of students. The cost per student (depending on contract – some were statewide contracts vs. individual school systems) ranged from $12 - $28 per student per year, training workshops must be purchased, and there are customization costs billed at an hourly rate.
Sapphire appears to be the product of a Lehigh Valley based company (K12 Systems in Allentown).
Considering the age of our existing system, one would think both had been considered in the initial review. Someone opted against recommending it then, and someone else (or the same someone) has now decided after investing time and money in one system to switch to another.
Scheduling Software
I’ve received notes from a few readers who indicated a change in Scheduling Software resulted in more than a few problems with student schedules. From these parents I heard that students’ schedules had classes that were incorrect or didn't exist, some students were in the system more than one time resulting in their being scheduled at two classes at the same time, etc.
Again, I have little information on this to date, but it appears to be a new system that was pushed to be used for this school year and it had more than its share of initial bugs. The cost to fix these bugs probably isn't considered, but the disruption to students, teachers, administrators, and parents as a result is huge. Have you had any issues with scheduling for your child or has it been more isolated (and I just got the notes from a few who were impacted)?
I wonder if these two systems are one and the same, which they well could be, and the fact that the portal system isn’t ready means we pushed the scheduling module and didn’t have time to fully complete testing or review schedules prior to distributing them to students resulting in the issues that have come to light.
15 comments:
I know my son, a high school freshman didn't get one of his elective choices. Not sure if he's a victim of the scheduling software issue or not but I'm wondering if others had the same experience.
Chris,
From what I understand, it is pretty wide spread with a lot of students being affected.
I took a look at their web site, and the application being used for the new Parent Portal also says it handles scheduling in addition to a lot of other things such as address verification to make sure the student lives within the boundaries and checking to make sure a student has the necessary pre-requisites for a class.
So my guess is this is one software purchase that handles multiple things.
Understanding that there is a cost savings specifically around annual maintenance costs (which are usually around 18% of the purchase cost) and hosting. This means we are only paying support on a single application and a single host instance as opposed to both costs on two packages.
Could it be that our district actually did something that makes sense? Most likely, but I am sure they will wipe out any savings we get off of this with additional spending.
Maybe good to use this product, but why not have gone with it in the first place?
The money sunk is sapphire is lost so too is the time and training invested.
This product has been on market 12 years and is national in scope, we must have known about it before. A probable good decision after a costly miss-step.
"The money sunk is sapphire is lost so too is the time and training invested."
And they don't think a thing of it. Kind of like the old Doritos commercial that said, "Crunch all you want, we'll make more".
NASD version? We'll spend all we want, and then take more!
If you look at K12 Systems web site (provider of the Sapphire Portal), they have capabilities almost identical to those with the new system. So the question is why did we switch when you have two comparable products, and one that we already owned?
K12 Systems is located in Allentown while Pearson (the vendor of the new package) is located in Rancho Cordova, CA. Why not go with the local company and keep our tax dollars in the Lehigh Valley?
I would hope that they did a real evaluation and that there are some benefits (both functional as well as cost) to switching. But, my guess is that someone new in the district said "hey, we should use this, I loved it at my last district".
NazoRanter-
I believe in what you said before that this is one purchase that handles multiple things and thus costs on one application, not many. There would not have been a switch had there not been some benefit, there would have been no reason to. Of course, other spending by the district, i.e. construction costs, etc. may not cease anytime soon.
Blog2see,
If you look at the two vendors, their products provide almost identical functionality (portal, scheduling, grading, etc.), so I have to question why did we embark on a new software acquisition when we already had a product in house that does the same things?
There could be a number of real valid reasons, and as a taxpayer, I personally would like to hear them since it is my (and your) hard earned dollars that are paying for it.
I also have a fundamental problem with giving business to a company 3000 miles away when we could be supporting a local business and keeping local residents employed.
Again, there could be circumstances that drove the change (bad support, increased maintenance or hosting fees, etc.), but again, none of that detail has been provided.
The PowerSchool software has a lot of small differences in it to make things better for everyone. I will try to get a list of those little differences that makes PowerSchool better than the old computer system(that we had for about 15 years). It was time to make a switch because almost every other day with the old system you would hear that the program was having problems, and would not be worjing for some period of time. Everytime you make changes in anything it always takes time to get use to it and worked out the problems.
As for the schedule issues the NASD always had problems with schedules but the guidance counsolor's had time to look over all the schedules and catch the big errors. With this new system however, it took most of the summer to get PowerSchool up and running so the schedules had to come out and the counselors did not have time to look over the majority of them. There should not be as many problems next year.
I suppose it would be too much to ask to run parallel for a short time. Private sector professionals - the ones NASD folks love to compare themselves with at contract time - go through conversions all the time, and don't just tell their customers they don't get service for 4 months while they work out the bugs.
And please spare us the "we can't afford it", when we can spend on sports as if it is an offering to God.
Fourth,
There is one problem with your argument.
It makes too much sense, and we can't have any of that now.
The problem is that none of these people have ever held a job in the real world, so you might as well be speaking a foreign language.
You could not be more on the money with the sports. With the exception of the palace we just built, most of the major expenditures have been around sports (turf, field house, weight room, new ATV for the trainer and I am sure there are more), pay raises for teachers, pay raises for administrators.
Funny, in all these expenses, I have yet to hear one that is focused on building out academic programs.
Jacob,
Thank you for your comment. You are right that every switch takes time, especially when it is most likely pushed until the last minute while everyone debates it to death in the hierarchy.
The latest comments that there are no private sector individuals or anyone that has held a job in the real world in the department or in the district is false. Continuing to make blanket statements such as these lead everyone in the wrong direction and focus.
"The latest comments that there are no private sector individuals or anyone that has held a job in the real world in the department or in the district is false."
Help us out, which administrators had a private sector career?
From the administration page on the NASD web site and trying to find those who may have had input in the technology realm, I know that Lesky, Roth, and Riker all came through the teacher to administrator ranks.
Rishcoff is school based having been at another district prior to Nazareth.
Resende was hired on 10/08 at $98,000 and the ET article noted she was from the North Penn School District. She was hired as Supervisor of Curriculum on 8/07 at a salary of $92,771.
Uelsis, has been with the district roughly 9 years and in 2006-07 an educators database identified him as having a salary of $56,709.
I could find no information on Tamara Gary, David Trach or John Eates.
It looks like at best there could be three people who haven't spent at least the past several years within school/public funded environment.
The lack of business acumen is a flaw of our school systems in general. Having board members from outside education isn't enough, they need to be on the administrative team as well.
Sorry in advance...this will be a long comment!
I know several techs and admins working in other districts and they all worked in the private sector prior to the district job and from what I understand, NASD's IT staff of 6 is the same. I am adding the technicians in here as well, although I know they are not administrators but have a key role nevertheless. They are a different group from educational technology, which is comprised of educators. These guys, including the admin seem to graduate from tech school, some from college and work technical support for ISP's or companies/private businesses. They almost need to because unlike teachers, need experience before supporting that amount of users. It's the same as electricians or maintenance. They certainly did not graduate as an educator with a certificate to work in a school district.
I, like yourself, believe there should be MANY more private sector administrators and other individuals in districts that have been through the real world.
These guys, however, don't have the clout generally to make extensive cost decisions, although they do recommendations. However, the higher ups tell them we want X software or X abilities to support this application and their job is to implement that. They are the ones that are not in the public eye and it is assumed they are like all the other admins and educators and also that they are paid likewise.
I do not understand why you believe more private sector administrators would make the district better. Educating kids is not about making money. We all can see what greed has done to our economy in the past two years, why would we want that in our schools? These are our kids we are dealing with, not a product to be marketed. There are districts out there that keep their costs under control, unfortunately Nazareth is not one of them. The way these other districts keep their costs in line is to elect conservative board members who are not afraid to say no to spending money. Unfortunately our district continues to elect the same board members whose goal is not to reign in spending.
justc,
I think you are missing the point. We do not want to "make money" or "market" our children.
What we want is a group that runs the district efficiently and within a reasonable budget.
If a companies management ran their business they way NASD runs its, they would have been fired or the business would have folded.
There is no concept of budget, only spending. We never hear of cuts, and when they are proposed, they are not in the most cost effective areas.
Spending more money does not equate to a better education, a fact that has been proven time and time again.
The district decision makers have not learned the basic concept of spending wisely, something they would have learned had they spent a single day running or working in a commercial business.
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