The Española School District is preparing to “go live” in the next few months with a new student information system designed for general education, special education and real-time access to student data.
The migration from the District’s antiquated system to the new one, has been in the works for more than a year-and-a-half.
The total five-year cost for implementing the platform is $200,757, which covers the software license, cloud hosting services, maintenance services and Web-based gradebook curriculum and assessment tools for teachers.
The new Synergy educational system is also expected to handle, among other data sources, online student registration, grading records and K-12 student information.
The platform also provides, among other services, parent and student portals, individualized education program management for special education students, assessment reports and curriculum management tools.
District Network Administrator Luis Peña, manager for the Information Technology side of the project, said the switch to the new system, which he estimates should be ready by June 13, prior to the start of summer school programs, was driven by two main goals: The need for state compliance in terms of periodic reporting District data to the state, and a more user-friendly system compatible with the needs of the District schools and the community.
“Imagine going from using a computer running on Windows 95 to one with a brand new Macintosh operating system,” he said. “Then you get an idea of what it’s like.”
Peña said the biggest challenge to staff has been converting massive amounts of data from the District’s outdated system. He said data conversion began in the fall and is expected to be completed by June 3.
He said the project has been labor-intensive and involved cleaning up large amounts of bad data.
“It’s been a phenomenal amount of work,” he said.
Technology Coordinator Andrew Trujillo said the project affects more than 80 percent of the District’s operational budget and called it the heart of the District’s data management operations.
Training on the new system is provided by Edupoint company representatives and has been ongoing since February. The training is being spread out over several staff development days this month, Peña said.
Trujillo said the District first issued a Request for Proposals in January 2015 and chose the Synergy Education Platform, after an extensive process of surveys, interviews and feedback to ascertain the District’s various departments’ technology needs got underway.
He said the system is funded through technology bonds, through a five-year contract with Edupoint, the company which first launched the student information system in 2005.
“We didn’t want to spend the money on it until we found out what our needs were,” Peña said. “We found out that most of our parents and the community were accessing the Internet through their phones.”
Peña and Trujillo discovered a mobile-accessible platform, which was not limited by specific platforms or brands, that became of paramount importance. This gave Edupoint’s Synergy system the edge over the District’s antiquated system.
“One of the things that’s great about this system is that it’s platform-independent and web-based,” Peña said.
He said teachers and other staff members will no longer be required to be on campus to complete a number of tasks. The new system will allow them to have remote access to data and web portals that will facilitate the completion of such tasks.
For example, the student portal on the new system will allow students to easily submit documents, while a parent portal will allow more interaction with teachers. Parents can get grade alerts on their mobile devices and monitor their children’s progress off campus through alerts on their phone applications.
The District also entered into a professional agreement with Cooperative Educational Services contractor Denise Johnston on Jan. 25.
The contract runs through the end of Fiscal Year 2016 with Johnston earning up to $8,750 to serve as a liaison between the District technology staff and administration for making recommendations and decisions regarding the Synergy Student Information System.
Johnston is under contract by the District as a special projects facilitator.
Peña said the best solution would be to have someone permanently on staff to serve as a liaison between the instructional side and the technology side, but that position has proven difficult to staff.
“Somebody with a teaching license was needed,” he said. “So she is making the decisions on how to format the grade books and working on the curriculum. She’s been very instrumental in the success of the project.”