Two Vancouver Island school districts have jumped on board to help the Saanich district build a computer system for tracking student registrations, attendance, grades and other records.
Comox Valley and Vancouver Island North districts both committed to joining the openStudent project in recent days and more districts are expected to follow.
Saanich superintendent Keven Elder said discussions are underway with half a dozen other districts. He expects at least two of those to sign on in the near future.
“As soon as we have two more committed to the project, then we’ll form the not-for-profit society that will oversee the development from this point forward,” he said.
Saanich began the project two years ago, investing about $1.5 million and hiring a team of computer programmers to begin work in fall 2011.
The plan was to use local expertise to develop a student-information system that was made by B.C. schools, for B.C. schools at a fraction of what it costs to buy and operate a commercial product.
Elder said this week that the project is on schedule with the core version for elementary schools slated to undergo testing in three districts this spring.
By using freely available open-source tools, Saanich officials believe they can develop openStudent for under $5 million, with yearly maintenance pegged at less than $1 million.
In contrast, the B.C. government says it spent $97 million over the past 10 years on the B.C. enterprise Student Information System — also known as BCeSIS — a provincewide system slated for replacement.
District officials in Comox Valley and Vancouver Island North said that they were attracted to openStudent by the potential cost-savings and opportunity to have a say in how the project is developed.
“Financially, it makes good sense to us,” said John Martin, secretary-treasurer of Vancouver Island North.
Martin said the district’s board has agreed to invest $18 per student in the project for a total of about $24,000.
Saanich secretary-treasurer Monica Schulte said district investors will get their money back.
“Those fees will all be returned to those districts once it’s up and running and we’re able to collect yearly dues from the districts that use it,” she said.
“It’s just … to get the project to completion because [Saanich] is taking a big commitment to do it all themselves.”
Comox Valley committed to the project after sending a team of people to Saanich to see openStudent in action.
“What we were interested in was a highly functional product that was easy to use and made sense,” said Russell Horswill, secretary-treasurer of the Comox Valley district.
“The committee folks that we sent down to look at it came back very impressed.”
The financial benefits were one selling point, he said. “But more importantly, we think Saanich school district is on to something good and [we] thought it would be good to join them.”
