[K12OSN] Schoolmaster / schoolmaster.com

[Paul VanGundy]

Sharon,

I agree that size makes is a factor, but isn't the focus. It really
depends on what features your district demand from an SIS and are those
features offered. You may have two school districts with 2500 students
but District A may use their SIS more exhaustively than District B. 

An example, we really need features to keep track of discipline. That
features doesn't exist in Centre. With PowerSchool we can track
discipline by day, time, and location. So we can pull up all students
that during 9am-11am on February 17th were truant. It will give us all
the students that meet these conditions. Centre and SchoolTool can't do
that. That is a feature we need to have because that's what our district
uses to track discipline. Other school districts might not.

Again, the above was an example but the focus should be on what are the
needs of your district and not necessarily the size.

-Paul


On Fri, 2006-02-17 at 12:30 -0500, Sharon Betts wrote:
> I would like to know the size of your district(s).  There are several in
> Maine using Centre (2500 students approximately) and I believe it is
> working very well.
> Sharon
> 
> vangundypw at sau14.k12.nh.us on Friday, February 17, 2006 at 12:27 PM -0500
> wrote:
> >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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> 
> 
> 
> Educational Technology Coordinator MSAD#52
> 59 Cobb Rd  Turner, ME 04282
> 207-225-4565               sbetts at msad52.org
> 
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