ISD OKs new software

By: Nick Tabor, Daily News Correspondent
Hillsdale Daily News

July 19, 2008

Hillsdale, Mich. —

The Hillsdale Intermediate School District will drop its current administrative software in favor of a sleeker, stabler and more user-friendly software package, beginning with the coming school year, the Board of Education decided Thursday.

The new software costs about $12,000 more than it would cost to continue using SDS, the current software, which required an expensive update and which some of the county’s school administrators consider archaic and inefficient.

“Everyone was pretty much fed up with SDS,” said JC Morris, supervisor of technology.

Superintendent Robert Henthorne said the district shouldn’t worry about the extra expenditure — Skyward would prove cheaper in the long run.

“You’re gonna jump in the cold water,” he said. “The question is, is it gonna be six feet deep or seven feet deep?”

The district formed a committee in January to explore the ISD’s other software options.

The committee eventually chose to recommend Skyward, which appeared stabler and easier to use and could perform more tasks than SDS.

It contains two components: one for finances, the other for student data.

The school will use the finance component for its budgeting and record keeping, as it currently does with SDS. But the Skyward software can handle account and expenditure types that SDS cannot, Morris said.

With the new student software, students and parents will be able to access grades, assignments and medical and attendance records from the school’s Web site, Morris said.

“The biggest thing that everybody really keyed in on was the user-friendliness of it,” he said. Henthorne said Skyward already offered the district a fixed rate for technical support over the next five years.

“With SDS that’s a big question mark,” he said.

Morris said five school districts in Hillsdale County will adopt Skyward’s finance software in the fall and four will adopt the student software as well.

Director of Bus-ness/Finance Belinda Shaffer said each district will save money by consolidating their training sessions.

“We’re gonna do as much group training as possible,” she said.

Morris said that consolidation should bring the cost down from $15,000-19,000 to $8,000-11,000 per district.