Wisconsin District Gets New SIS After 20 Years With Old System
After 20 years with the same student information
system (SIS),
the fifth-largest school district in Wisconsin is getting a new one.
The Racine
Unified School District, with more than 20,000
students in seven towns and 40 schools, turned over a new leaf when it
signed
on with Infinite
Campus to put the new SIS, Infinite
Campus District Edition,
in place by summer 2015.
"Every stakeholder who attended the Infinite Campus
demo liked
the system's very contemporary interface and that it's easy to
navigate," said
James DePue, student and instructional systems data supervisor for the
district.
Among the new features that the Racine district will
be
getting with the new system is Cloud Choice Hosting, which DePue said he and others believe will ensure more data security than its previous SIS, whose
vendor
outsourced hosting to a third party.
"It just became too challenging to pull necessary
data from
the system," DePue said. "We run more than 40 exports daily and report
querying
was very slow because of limited bandwidth."
As part of the package, Racine will be getting a new
online
registration system that DePue said he expects will save the district money and
a Data
Health Check feature intended to clean data and identify training needs.
"If we see data-related issues popping up in a
department or
building, we can immediately direct those users to tutorials," DePue
said.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.