[K12OSN] Schoolmaster / schoolmaster.com

Paul VanGundy vangundypw at sau14.k12.nh.us
Fri Feb 17 17:27:55 UTC 2006


Mike,

I guess it really depends on how exhaustive you use your student
information systems. I know that we looked at several different SIS
databases like Centre, SchoolTool, MMS, iPass, and PowerSchool. This is
my thought on Open Source SIS databases to date: Primitive. At an
elementary school level you can probably get away without a lot of the
features that more robust and commercial SIS databases like PowerSchool
offer but at the high school and district levels, we can't live without
options that we get with commercial SIS databases. We indeed did go with
PowerSchool as it is extremely robust, web based, and always up to date
with our state reporting forms. Not to mention many other options and
customer support. These are the things that Centre and SchoolTool lack.
I am all for implementing Linux and open source applicationd in
educational institutions (which I have), but in my humble opinion, it's
not worth relying on an open source SIS database for my district yet....

-Paul

On Fri, 2006-02-17 at 12:05 -0500, Mike Heins wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> With the success of our K12ltsp labs, and the fact that all remaining
> computer systems problems seem to be Windows/related, we are in the
> market for a Linux-based school information system (to replace Hunter
> Schoolminder, etc.).
> 
> My cooperating teacher ran across Schoolmaster, which apparently can
> run its custom DB (Faircomp) on Linux, but still runs all code on
> Windows clients.
> 
> I surveyed the options last year and didn't see anything real good
> that was web or Linux based. 
> 
> So I have three questions:
> 
>     1) Are there any satisfied or dissatisfied Schoolmaster
>        users out there?
> 
>     2) Have any options opened up (or become stronger) in the
>        past year for school information systems?
> 
>     3) How close is the Shuttleworth school system from being
>        useful for grades and report cards?
> 
> Best,




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