New IEP Software – Getting Closer

On Friday August 17th Beth Campagna and I met with a small group of learning support teachers, special ed staff and psychologist for a preview of the new IEP writer from K12 Systems. What we saw both impressed us and made us decide that we need to keep the project in the oven for just a few more weeks.

First off- K12 Systems is creating an awesome package. Besides a very elegant and easy to use interface, the screens are far quicker to navigate and load than our current system. Additionally, the ability to have student demographic data flow directly from the core Sapphire SIS means that duplicate (and triplicate) data entry will be a thing of the past. Longer term, we expect to provide read-only views of IEP information to teacher staff, thereby eliminating our current massive photocopy & paper chase. We all liked what we saw and are anxiously awaiting the final product.

That said, the IEP writer is a system that really can’t be deployed in a step-by-step fashion. Specifically, the entire printable document and it’s associated work-flow has to be a complete entity, not a work in progress. Basically we found on Friday that we need to spend more time refining the screens both cosmetically and functionally. So, instead of proceeding with a system that is simply not quite ready, we decided to delay deployment and work with K12 to refine the final version. Beth and I both think that a short delay in deployment will reward us with a much better package in the long run. More to come…


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