Saanich Board of Education is banking on its student information system, called openStudent, performing better and costing less than any commercially developed enterprise system on the market. Now the board is asking for investment funds from school boards around the province to complete the project.
Powell River Board of Education trustees received the request from Saanich and briefly discussed the matter at their January meeting.
“We’re looking at exploring all the alternatives well in advance of making a decision ourselves,” said Steve Hopkins, School District 47 secretary treasurer. “Any solution we pick has to work with everyone else in the province.”
The ministry of eduction is discontinuing the current provincial student information system in December 2015. British Columbia Enterprise Student Information System (BCeSIS) was set up in 2005 and cost the province $16 million to develop and about $11 million a year to operate and maintain, according to published information. Additionally, the province paid $6.6 million in incentives to 56 out of 60 school districts willing to use the software.
In 2011, the province hired Gartner Inc., a technology consulting company, to look at the software’s feasibility after complaints of it being slow, unreliable and crashing during times of heavy use. Gartner’s report concluded that the current system, “as it’s currently deployed, is not meeting the business, technical or operational needs of BC and is not a viable future alternative.” The report suggested the government pursue new software, “to support the direction of BC and be able to provide the technical architecture necessary to achieve its objectives and goals.”
Saanich school district started developing its own system in June 2011, after Gartner’s report was released. Using its own capital funds, the district has enough to complete the core of the project but is looking to other school districts around the province for $3,899,000 to finish it.
“The intent was to produce software that would be cost-effective, relevant and responsive to changing educational requirements and controlled by the BC education community,” wrote Wayne Hunter, Saanich Board of Education chair.
School districts that invest in the project would be looking at lower operating costs, so whatever money is put up front would be like prepaying future costs for using the system, said Hopkins.
There are a lot of details to be worked out, but Hopkins told the Peak the board is looking into finding an option that “works for staff and parents in Powell River while still meeting all the criteria for the bigger picture.
“We don’t want to buy something because it’s cheaper and then have hamstrung ourselves [if it] requires a lot of staff time to move records around,” he said. “Saanich will be rolling it out next September, so there will be all kinds of time to see how well it works. It’s intriguing, in some ways, but premature to say what we are going to do.”
