Over summer break, the district adopted a new software system called Synergy by Edupoint. Synergy houses both the gradebook and the Student Information System (SIS). SIS is a program that holds information on students’ parents, graduation plans and class schedules.

“We have been looking at making a change in SIS for a number of years,”  Instructional Technology Coordinator Doug Start said. “It is a massive switch that costs tens of thousands of dollars.  Because of the bond that was passed in the spring it freed up our regular technology budget to handle the purchase and implementation costs and not put additional burden on the general fund.”

Teachers are being educated on a demonstration website so they will be capable of using it during the school year.

“So far the reaction is positive,” Start said.

Parent Internet Viewer (PIV) is now called ParentVue and takes it a step further into another system providing ways to communicate with teachers and tools to go paperless for report cards and progress reports. Now parents can view all of their child’s information under one account.

There’s also a separate student portal called StudentVue that has a view similar to ParentVue but also features a drop box to teachers for turning in assignments, assessment tools and course scheduling.

“I have not seen a lot of disadvantages with the system so far,” Start said.  “We lost some of our ability to customize reports and parts of the system but the positives far outweigh the negatives”