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Hi, Addison Central SU recently chose PowerSchool. Briefly... - We have 6 small elementary schools each of which had a small database, spreadsheet or word doc with student information. - We have one larger elementary school that converted from MacSchool - The middle school and high school converted from SASI - We took 6 months to create the RFP, put out to bid, receive proposals, see demonstrations and do site visits. - We negotiated a phased implementation. I would strongly recommend the phased approach vs. the 90 day implementation Pearson is pushing. - Depending on the size of the district, I also think having one person focused 100% on the implementation is recommended. - During the 08-09 school year we converted all data, customized PowerSchool to meet our needs, rolled out demographics and attendance to 7 elementary schools and 1 middle school. - During the first year our high school also used PowerSchool scheduling to begin their implementation. - 09-10 School year. High school went live with everything. All remaining schools added gradebook and report card production. - Our Pearson Project Manager was great, Pearson support has been mostly good. Some support rep's are better than others but overall better than the support we received from Weidenhammer. Overall, things have gone very smoothly. No system is perfect though and there have been some frustrations. I would say "out of the box" reporting is the weakest area of PowerSchool, though you can create your own reports (if you have enough time - which we haven't). If you want more details, feel free to give me a call. I would love to see an active PowerSchool Users group created for our state though I'm not sure how to get that going. There is an inactive Yahoo group and an inactive google group already created. Any ideas? ... Susan ********************* Susan T. Sheets Student Information System Manager Addison Central Supervisory Union 49 Charles Ave Middlebury, VT 05753 802-382-1271 School Information Technology Discussion <[log in to unmask]> writes: >Does anyone have any suggestions about selecting a student information >system. If you have recently gone with a new system it would be helpful >to hear your experiences. I'm constructing a matrix and want to make >sure all considerations are in it without being overwhelming. I would >really like to hear from those of you who have a success story to tell.