From Dr. Grable to the Pioneer Family.
I apologize for the long letter, but there’s a lot of information to share with parents/guardians. During the 2022-2023 school year, a committee of administrators, teachers, and staff members made the decision to move from Harmony to PowerSchool (PS) as our Student Management System. A Student Management System houses and manages all of the student/parent related information, including: contact information, emergency contacts, health records, attendance records, discipline records, teacher grade books, report cards, and student transcripts. PS is the top tool in the state with 52% of Indiana school districts utilizing it, and it offered several features that were not available in Harmony at the time. We have worked since last spring to deploy PS at the highest level. Unfortunately, that deployment has not gone as planned. PS has not met our expectations concerning deployment and is not providing adequate support to resolve the issues and frustrations that they have created. From what we’re hearing across the state, new clients to PS are having the same unfortunate experience and frustrations this year.
We’ve also heard the frustrations from parents on the utilization of PS; as well as from our staff members. Due to the lack of support from PS to resolve these issues, we have made the decision to transition back to Harmony. Harmony will support this transition back at no additional costs to the district. Since we rolled over our data from last year to this year within Harmony, the transition will only take a day or two to implement. Our staff members will be using this week and Fall Break to finalize this transition. Our teachers and staff will begin utilizing Harmony instead of PS on Monday, Oct. 23rd. We will also transition over the first nine-week attendance, discipline reports, and end of the grading period course grades. Teachers will be printing off their PS grade book for the first nine week for their records.
Most of our parents are familiar with Harmony and the tools that it provides. In order to make sure that all of our data is correct for this year, we will have to request that parents “re-register” their student(s) online in Harmony. This way we can ensure that all of your contact and emergency contact information is correct. For example, PS did not have a screen for reunification in emergency situations. Harmony provides that information – this important information tells us who we can send your child home with in emergencies. In the next couple weeks, Harmony will send out a mass email to all of our parents that will contain a link to the Harmony Family Access Website and each parent’s access code to create their Harmony account. When you receive this email, we ask that you take a few minutes to set up your account and re-register your student(s). We will also notify parents when this email is sent through other communication options (Social Media, website, Apptegy Rooms, etc.). If you run into issues or do not receive this email, please contact our IT Dept at (574) 643-3145.
Please note the additional information below concerning other aspects of this transition: • Food Services: There was a lot of confusion this year regarding lunch
accounts and paying breakfast/lunch fees online. In order to work with PS, Food Services had to purchase a separate third-party system called Lunch Time. Parents make online payments and check balances through Lunch Time and not PS. So that there are no disruptions in meal accounts, parents will continue to utilize the Lunch Time third-party software for meal balances and online payments through the 2023-2024 school year. Lunch Time will also work with Harmony. Beginning next fall, for the 2024-2025 school year, we will revert back to Harmony’s Food Services system.
-
Transportation: There should be no disruptions to our Transportation Department. The students are currently routed and on assigned school buses. We were having problems getting PS to talk to our routing software. The transition back to Harmony will help that process moving forward.
-
Apptegy Rooms: This should be a seamless transition for parents already registered in Apptegy Rooms. Once Harmony is syncing with Rooms, you should not notice a change or have to do anything in Apptegy or Rooms. If you have not signed up for Apptegy Rooms through our mobile App, I encourage you to do so as soon as possible following the transition. Rooms will continue to be our first line of communication between teachers, coaches, and students/parents.
Again, this is not the outcome that we had hoped for when we started this process. We had anticipated a new and better tool for our parents and staff. Unfortunately, that has not played out due to mistakes by PowerSchool and a lack of support to correct those mistakes. At this point, Pioneer is not willing to sink more funding, time, and effort to correcting PowerSchool’s issues when they don’t seem to see Pioneer as a priority. Harmony has made a few changes to their system to improve it and is bending over backwards to get our business back this year. Although it may not be perfect, it has proven to be a better tool than what we’ve experienced with PS. We greatly appreciate your understanding and flexibility as we work to resolve this issue and transition back to Harmony. Please let us know if you have any questions or need support from our IT Department.