A new unified student information system has been chosen for all 28 school divisions in Saskatchewan, as well as for the Ministry of Education, which will replace all systems that have been used by school divisions up until now.
The trustees of the Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division were provided the details at their monthly board meeting on Feb. 14. They were informed the Maplewood system for compiling all data relating to students will no longer be used, and a system developed by Fujitsu will be brought in for the entire province.
There will be a licensing fee of about $8 per student, and this will come off the per-student education grant provided by the Ministry of Education, for the five-year contract. Most concerning to the trustees is that all training costs of personnel in the use of the system have to be borne by the school divisions.
Currently there are no school boards in Saskatchewan using the Fujitsu system, said education director Gwen Keith, although several school boards in B.C. are using it.
“The most important thing is the impact on us. We’ve been asked by the ministry to sign a letter of support for the information system. The ministry wants letters from all 28 boards to take to cabinet. They want to make sure the school boards are represented,” said Keith.
School divisions are being given a two-year window to implement the new information system, she added, with nine school boards needing to start implementing it in April, including the South East Cornerstone Public School Division.
“Nine boards have to change right now. They have no choice,” said Keith. “Part of the problem is, they’ve only created a two-year window. We have not planned to go in with these nine boards. After talking with our staff about it, we haven’t changed our minds on that.”
One worry they have is the service they will now get from Maplewood, now that a different company has been chosen to supply the information system for the entire province, she said.
“We’ve got staff heavily trained on Maplewood. Now this is brand new, who are we going to get trained in this?” said Keith, noting that for Holy Family, they will need to start changing over to the new system by April 2019.
“We’ve been waiting for a long time for this.”
Chief financial officer Lisa Wonsiak noted when this kind of changeover was done in another school division, they had to keep the old system going for at least the first full year with the new system so they didn’t lose the data they had on their students from previous years.
Asked by a board member if this new system will be a good one for them, Keith replied, “Yes, I do. There will be security pieces that will be a part of it … they put a lot of work into this.”
Estevan trustee Bob Cossette said he might agree to sign a letter as long as the province indicates some kind of financial support, “or it’ll put a big hole in our budget.”
“We’ve been saying that all along,” agreed Keith, who pointed out if they were one of the boards which had to do this right away, she’d be on the phone to one of the education directors in B.C. using this system to find out exactly what’s entailed in setting it up.
“When it comes to professional development for us here, that’s our nickel,” she added.
