December Update Emailed to All Harker

Good Afternoon and Happy Holidays!

Back in September, I sent everyone a message letting you know that we would be evaluating and considering our current use of our Student Information System (SIS), which is currently PCR, and I would be soliciting feedback from various user groups.

Now that the first phase of this process (having Focused Feedback meetings) is complete, we’ll move to the next phase, which is the preliminary meetings with different SISs. This next phase will take place in the January and February months and by March, I will be having meeting with the user groups again to do two things:

1. Report back on the criteria and information from SISs, and
2. Solicit interest to participate on a longer-term SIS Success Team
1. This SIS Success Team will meet on a regular basis
2. We will meet with 2-3 of the final SIS representatives to get a longer demo, and
3. We will be making a decision about which SIS is a best fit for Harker

                                                              i.      That decision will likely be made by late Spring

I deeply appreciate everyone’s feedback, emails, and support during this process. I’m hopeful about the future and excited to help all of us find a system that is as good as we can get. ☺

If you were unable to, or chose not to participate in the Focused Feedback Sessions, and still want to provide some feedback, I have two requests of you:

1. PLEASE review our blog, these slides (which are embedded within the blog), and this spreadsheet of criteria (which is embedded in the slides)
1. Note: The criteria spreadsheet is also listed within the blog, so if you prefer to read the criteria using the blog format, don’t do double-work and skip the spreadsheet
2. If you have any feedback that is not already listed ANYWHERE on the blog or spreadsheet, please send me an email ASAP with that feedback

If you DID participate in a Focused Feedback Session, I have one request:

1. Please read the blog and refresh your memory and see what other user groups have expressed as wishes and wonders

As always, please reach out with any questions along the way.

Happy Holidays!

ITSS

I had the opportunity to meet with the ITSS Team to learn about how they use the Student Information System, and to discover their needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck:



And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• Reports - Stock & Custom ease of creation
• Scheduled / automated reports of students
• Open API
• Want to do own tests /benchmarking of tracing data center path during testing phase
• Benchmark data use
• LDAP 
• Bad connection tolerance
• Offline mode? Notification of such
• Test with specific users
• Scheduled backups and restoration process
• Email - through their relay or ours
• Cached version of user credentials Search features and usability
• Emails - personal library of groups
• Create your own groups
• Integration with GSuite or O365
• Mass notification 
• Voice recognition
• Readily available support
• Contractors available?
• Mapping path for custom reports
• Common naming structures
• Support - Use of Content Delivery Network (CDN) or through own
• Providing names and IP addresses to get through filters
• Notifications when changes are made (like IP addresses, etc.)

Teachers - Upper, Middle, Preschool and Some of Lower

I had the opportunity to meet with interested teachers from the following divisions over the last two weeks: I ultimately heard from 15 Upper School Teachers, 10 Middle School Teachers, 8 Preschool Teachers and I've spoken to 3 Lower School Teachers (as well as Kristen and Sarah) to learn about how they use the Student Information System, and to discover their needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck:



And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• Upper School Feedback
• Email read receipts; access history
• Grade history
• Absences and tardies history
• Ease of data entry for assignments
• Copy/paste/ data integrity in assignment descriptions
• Yearly rollovers of assignments
• Mapping year-to-year days, rather than dates for assignments
• Summer school issues with non-Harker households; uses Moodle instead of Schoology
• Collaboration with other teachers; seeing planning guides, etc.
• Who teaches what when; master schedule
• Calendar view options; ease of input of calendars (.csv upload?)
• Test calendar - who put in what when Inputting tests -editing entries doesn't change priority 
• Grades - user-friendly and flexibility 
• Multiple pathways clarity
• Access to archived courses
• User guides, professional development, YouTube Channel - self-help
• Development Schedule - updates well-communicated
• Multiple methods by which to create assignments (incalendar, assessment list, etc.)
• Multiple gradebooks open simultaneously
• Enter multiple grades for same assessment across periods/sections
• Drag and Drop Functions
• User Friendliness
• Avoid User Antagonism
• Planning tool potential?
• Linking sections Impersonating students
• What's Happening Calendar integrated
• Bulk grade email for individual grade within context (or other options) to students w/personalization feature/option
• Real-time access to zeros and blanks for students Calendar sorting; departmental calendars
• Conflict resolution for multiple activities, sports, etc.
• Ease of group creation for non-academic
• Stock reports v. custom reports; sending individual reports v. having to export a full class
• Ability to change category percentages mid-semester
• Viewing grading options (percentages, weights, whole point, etc.)
• Attendance ease
• Household Salutation
• Preschool Feedback
• Printing emergency contacts easily
• Alerts for changes to contact info or other
• Directory - easily organized by cottage
• Interoperability with Kinderlime and Group Spaces
• Signatures in SIS emails
• Auto-fill email addresses
• Middle School Feedback
• Interoperability - open API
• Training plan
• UX
• Latency rates
• Printing class lists ease
• Stock and Custom Reports - what currently exists?
• Smart search (v. dumb search)
• Split screen or multitasking ability
• Email - reply-all function
• Ease of finding sent emails
• Ease of group creation
• Data integrity and control
• Gradebook - multiple assignment creation with multiple dates
• Responsive theme
• Data parameters - score highlights in gradebook, health concerns, other special circumstances
• Multiple grading views
• Easy quick access for student details
• Notifications for missing assignments
• Student notes
• Email read receipts and which email is actually used
• Searching - ability to search for students across divisions; ease of making groups
• User friendliness - efficiency - direct navigation

Teachers - US, PS and MS

I had the opportunity to meet with interested teachers from the following divisions this week: four from the Upper School, all of the Preschool faculty and seven teachers from the Middle School, to learn about how they use the Student Information System, and to discover their needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck:



And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• Upper School Feedback
• Email read receipts; access history
• Grade history
• Absences and tardies history
• Ease of data entry for assignments
• Copy/paste/ data integrity in assignment descriptions
• Yearly rollovers of assignments
• Mapping year-to-year days, rather than dates for assignments
• Summer school issues with non-Harker households
• Collaboration with other teachers; seeing planning guides, etc.
• Who teaches what when; master schedule
• Calendar view options
• Test calendar - who put in what when
• Inputting tests -editing entries doesn't change priority 
• Grades - user-friendly and flexibility 
• Multiple pathways clarity
• Preschool Feedback
• Printing emergency contacts easily
• Alerts for changes to contact info or other
• Directory - easily organized by cottage
• Interoperability with Kinderlime and Group Spaces
• Signatures in SIS emails
• Auto-fill email addresses
• Middle School Feedback
• Interoperability - open API
• Training plan
• UX
• Latency rates
• Printing class lists ease
• Stock and Custom Reports - what currently exists?
• Smart search (v. dumb search)
• Split screen or multitasking ability
• Email - reply-all function
• Ease of finding sent emails
• Ease of group creation
• Data integrity and control
• Gradebook - multiple assignment creation with multiple dates
• Responsive theme
• Data parameters - score highlights in gradebook, health concerns, other special circumstances
• Multiple grading views
• Easy quick access for student details
• Notifications for missing assignments
• Student notes
• Email read receipts and which email is actually used

Attendance and More Administrative Assistance

I had the opportunity to meet with the Sue Prutton and Lori Villareal, on behalf of Administrative Assistants and Attendance, and because it was recommended by multiple other groups that Sue and Lori would be a good people from which to receive feedback, to learn about how they use the Student Information System, and to discover their needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck:




And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• Interoperability with Ravenna
• Student, parents and household ID assignment - how does that occur - can they be manually assigned?
• Data control and integrity
• Demographics reporting - stock and custom
• Contract/ Deposit/ ACH Form Notifications & Access
• Ease of use for parents to re-enroll
• Parent to-do list for re-enrollments
• Access to previous years grades, transcripts, report cards
• Ability to archive previous years
• Access to gradebooks from previous years
• UL DL / Latency time when gradebook reports are running (monthly) - takes 2+ hours per grade level
• Parent teacher conference scheduling management
• Bell schedules - we have around 70 schedules @ US - ease of creating new schedules - LS has even more schedules

Admissions

I had the opportunity to meet with the Admissions Team today to learn about how they use the Student Information System, and to discover their needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck:




And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• Interoperability with Ravenna
• Student, parents and household ID assignment - how does that occur - can they be manually assigned?
• Data control and integrity
• Demographics reporting - stock and custom
• Contract/ Deposit/ ACH Form Notifications & Access
• Ease of use for parents to re-enroll
• Parent to-do list for re-enrollments

Advancement

I had the opportunity to meet with the Advancement Team today to learn about how they use the Student Information System, and to discover their needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck




And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• Ability to see log records - who made what changes to demographics and when - currently, they are hand-checking these records as they compare to old records
• Nomenclature consistency - can names in a new SIS align with other programs we have?
• Stock reports and custom reports - how to create and ease with which they are created
• Overall user-friendliness of the system
• Email formatting capabilities
• Parent use - can households or parents be categorized easily as alumni, teachers, etc.?
• Parent use - currently, parents receive multiples of the same email if they have multiple students - can this be streamlined?
• Data integrity
• PD and training available
• Can photos of parents or families be included?

Administrative Support & Assistants

I had the opportunity to meet with the Administrative Support Staff and Assistants over the last week to learn about how they use the Student Information System, and to discover their needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck
 
And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• How easy is the ability to search by household or parent?

• Stock Reports - what's there and what can be customized by whom?

• Editing transcripts - how are they created, formatted and edited? Must they be the same across all schools? 

• Access to past discipline and past grades - how easy is that?

• Tracking of attendance and detentions served - Tracking and notifying (admin) of tardy (every 3 = detention) and missed class (7 = warning; 10 = credit review) limits

• Latency rates

• UX Team; what kind of knowledge base exists?

• Multiple group emailing - are there easy to access contact groups?

• Emailing functions - how can we confirm who we're sending emails to?

• Interoperability - open API

BEST

I had the opportunity to meet with the BEST Team today to learn about how they use the Student Information System and needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck

 
And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• Latency rates - how quickly do pages load?
• How many steps does it tae to pull simple reports (looking at student schedules, teacher schedules, discipline records, attendance records, etc.)
• Are there varying roles for individuals that may not have an Active Directory account?
• Are there attendance notifications for parents (as it pertains to after-school activities)?
• Can after-school teachers view school-day attendance?
• Does an SIS integrate with SchoolPass?
• How do parents register their children into activities? Can registration open dates and times be pre-scheduled? Right now, they cannot. Can confirmations be sent to parents? What about waitlisting? When a parent gets to the top of a waitlist, are the notified? How? Can we set limits on how long they have to register before it goes to the next parent on the waitlist?
• Integration of billing - what does that look like?
• Is priority registration or pre-loading available for classes where particular students must have access to a class?
• How are yearlong versus quarter classes set up?
• When deletions are made - is the user prompted?
• User-friendliness for all users (teachers and parents)

Deans

I had the opportunity to meet with the Deans today to learn about how they use the Student Information System and needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck

 
And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• Latency rates - how quickly do pages load?
• How many steps does it tae to pull simple reports (looking at student schedules, teacher schedules, discipline records, attendance records, etc.)
• Viewing multiple years at a glance - in terms of grades, schedules and discipline?
• How can we assign codes to discipline types for easy data tracking? Right now, Deans can only view descriptors and those aren't associated with codes.
• Emailing features - it would be nice to choose multiple users when emailing (i.e., select or all teachers of a particular student)

Athletics

I had the opportunity to meet with the Athletics Department today to learn about how they use the Student Information System and needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck

 
And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• Athletics is currently using a Google Form and Sheet, shared with Attendance for Upper School early release.
• Can emergency cards be easily exported from the SIS?
• Is the SIS interoperable with Magnus?
• How are rosters for Athletics reflected in the SIS? 
• How can Athletics and Activities group lists created and how can those groups be emailed?
• How can we set up conflicts an the parameters for those conflicts?
• How can we set up P.E. pass/fail, transcriptable sections?
• What are the different roles available? Can custom roles be created?

Finance

I had the opportunity to meet with the Finance Department today to learn about how they use the Student Inofrmation System and needs that they may have in the kind of data reports that they might need to pull from a potential system.

As with each of these sessions, I presented them with this slidedeck


And here was their wish list and particular items of note:

• SAP Interoperability
• When a student is admitted to Harker, Admissions sends a Contract to the parents, and then the parents need to submit a deposit and (potentially) the ACH form. The receipt of those items goes through the SIS and informs Finance of their next steps. What kinds of systems are in existence for other SISs that allows the notifications of forms and deposits of this sort?
• How are log records accessed (who did what and when?)
• Is there a billing portal? How easy, or difficult, is it to use?
• What kind of data control is there? For instance, in our current system, if a parent is changing their address and accidentally types their name into the zip code field, our system does not catch this error, and allows it. This information is then pulled in reports and has to be hand-checked before importing into Financial systems (SAP).
• How easy, or difficult, is it to pull or create different demographic data reports?

Office of Communications & Schedulers

Today, as part of the SIS Focused Feedback Sessions to investigate our needs here at The Harker School, I met with the Office of Communications and the Schedulers as two distinct user groups. Take a look at their awesome feedback and questions!

As will be with all the meetings, we reviewed this slidedeck

Then, we discussed how each of these groups use our current SIS to develop the criteria by which we'll review our SIS options. This spreadsheet will be made available by request and ultimately made widely accessible across The Harker School staff and faculty. 

In short, here are the highlights:

The Office of Communications:

• In some ways, ideas may pop up after seeing others' suggestions
• Finalsite interoperability is a wish
• Ease of searching anything (i.e., teachers' schedules, students' schedules, etc.) would be nice
• Is the base code updated or outdated? Can templates easily be customized?
• API and culture of openness - how open are they with their collaboration interests?
• What kind of UX (user experience) and QA (quality assurance) teams do they have?
• Parents may be interested in being able to see their child's past grades

Schedulers:

• What is the customer service team on staff and how responsive are they?
• What professional development materials are available and what kinds of PD will be available to users?
• What is the communication protocol (i.e., how are updates communicated?)
• What currently exists in terms of stock or template reports and can reports be created by users, or must they run through the company?
• What is the ability to toggle on and off views for different user groups (students, parents, teachers)? Are those capabilities able to be discreet between divisions, or must settings be configured Harker-wide?
• How do they handle special schedules? Can those schedules be easily built within the SIS?
• When students change schedules, how does the SIS handle transporting the grades to the new teacher/class?
• What kind of access is there to view (or change) previous grades, and for whom?

Introductory Letter to All Staff & Faculty

Good Afternoon, Esteemed Colleagues,

As you may be aware, we are interested in looking at all our options to PCR. PCR is a brand of what’s commonly referred to as a Student Information System, or SIS. In our ongoing efforts to ensure that we are using the most appropriate and best tools available for The Harker School, we are embarking on a process that will first look at our needs. As such, I’d like to provide you with our plan for evaluating and exploring all our SIS options.

Here are a couple norms I’d like to set-up at the onset:

• First, seek to understand. While no single system will ever solve all our woes, we will absolutely make a best-faith effort to ensure that all voices are heard and respected.
• Transparency is king. I will be ensuring that you are given as much transparency into the process and choices as possible.
• As such, there is a blog located at: https://greatsisadventure.blogspot.com/ This blog will not be sent to you on a regular basis (so as to avoid email onslaught), but it will be regularly updated to track the progress for your review and reference.
• The process of reviewing and potentially transitioning SISs is largely agreed upon as the single most complex process to undertake.
• Most of all, if you have a question, concern or suggestion, PLEASE reach out.

When: Mid-October - December

What: SIS Focused Feedback Sessions will be held on all campuses, for all interested parties

Why: SIS Sessions are focused so that we can discreetly hear from different groups who use the SIS in different ways. The results of these feedback sessions will be made available to the rest of The Harker School Staff and Faculty; again, in the interest of transparency and so that we all can see the priorities of each group.

How: A schedule of sessions will be forthcoming in the next two weeks. Debrief notes will be shared via the blog if you cannot make any of the meetings.

Intended Outcome(s):

1. to educate and inform everyone on what exactly an SIS is and its intended use using some common language
2. to create a wish-list of characteristics or criteria for an ideal SIS at The Harker School

You will receive another email from me in the coming weeks with a schedule of times and dates for you to participate in one of these SIS Focused Feedback Sessions.

Additionally, you will hear from me again in mid-December as to our progress in these meetings and potential next steps.

I appreciate everyone’s participation and positive energy around ensuring that we are providing and offering the very best!

Sincerely,

Liz