RE: [school-discuss] Student Information Systems

["Doug Coats" <dcoats@heritagemail.org>]

I was already fully aware of the troubled and failed PSE version.
PowerSchools future is certainly a concern of ours.  Maxing out at 10K
students is not a problem for our active students of 450 but we grow by 25
every year with with max size of 875.  At that point active and inactive
students could easily max out this number.

<flip side>
Thank you for all of your suggestions but I havn't seen anything in them
that comes close to touching the tools in PowerSchool.

I am all for open source!  I am all for "control."  In fact that leads to
one of the things that I love about PowerSchool.  It is web based and
totally editable.  Drop what you don't want add what you need.  Totally
configurable to our schools needs.

If I could - I would write PowerSchool and make it open source but after I
had spend the time and effort I couldn't afford to.
</flip side>

We are still in the deciding phase - always looking.

Doug

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net
[mailto:owner-schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net]On Behalf Of Les
Richardson
Sent: Saturday, November 08, 2003 5:28 PM
To: schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net
Subject: Re: [school-discuss] Student Information Systems


It also points to the "Significant Difference" between paying a vendor to
build some features into a product and paying for development of an Open
Source product that you now have some "control over".

Control in the sense that you have the source code and can make the
product develop in directions that you want, directly. (by getting
employees or other developers to maintain/develop it)

You don't have to worry about some commercial enterprise "failing", and
forcing you to choose another product (plus the retraining costs,
conversion costs, etc. etc.).

With Open Source, the user/organization has control over its own software.


Les Richardson




On Sat, 8 Nov 2003, David Frankson wrote:

> Powerschool
>
> History of Powerschool
> http://www.thinksecret.com/news/powerschoolanalysis.html
> Recent troubles and layoffs
> http://www.thinksecret.com/news/powerschoolsupport.html
>
>
> You also might want to check out http://www.infinitecampus.com.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Pastor Doug Coats" <dcoats@heritagemail.org>
> To: <schoolforge-discuss@schoolforge.net>
> Sent: Friday, November 07, 2003 10:37 AM
> Subject: [school-discuss] Student Information Systems
>
>
> > I have been a silent member of this group for a while because I wanted
to
> > see what the Linux world offered world of education and simply because
the
> > culture of my school is not ready for huge Linux invasion.
> >
> > We are currently thinking about changing our SIS and I was wondering
what
> > your schools use to manage information about your students.  We
currently
> > use SchoolMinder by Hunter Systems and we have simply outgrown it as our
> > school continues to mature.  We are looking fairly favorably toward
> > PowerSchool for four advantages that it would give us.
> >
> > 1.  It is web based and totally customizable
> > 2.  It's accessibility by admin, teachers, students, and parents
> > 3.  It's scheduling ability
> > 4.  Teachers adding grades directly - less work for office staff
> >
> > These stand out over our currant system which simply tacks our students
> > using an Access database and tends to be to complicated in generating
> > specialized reports.
> >
> > Is there a Linux system we should consider?  We already run Linux on our
> > Gateway and File servers so the implementation of a Linux solution might
> be
> > a lot easier than adding an Apple box to the network mix.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Doug
> >
> >
>