PowerSchool

I have been a PowerSchool user for 7 years. This system is great for first time users because it is easy to get started and to enter data easily. We really could not conduct our school business without it. We customize our PowerSchool for specific uses. One of my favorite screens is my customized test screen. Very helpful, especially for testing coordinators.

I highly recommend PowerSchool to any school district not currently utilizing this great tool!!

Our district has been using PowerSchool since 2001! Every year PowerSchool keeps getting better and better.

I am the PowerSchool Admin for our district and have been for the past 12 years. Sure we have looked at other SIS’s but none of them compare to all of the great features PowerSchool provides. There will always be things that some users like and some dislike but there is no product that will satisfy every type of user but with the ability to customize pages and create reports with SQL or the new Enterprise Reporting you can pretty much come extremely close or get exactly what a user would need to help with their job whether they are an office staff, admin, counselor, or teacher.

I’m not surprised that PowerSchool has won The Journal Reader’s Choice Award for the 2nd year in a row.

They are leading the way in the SIS market and with all the new acquisitions it is a one stop shop for all student data from student registration to attendance to grades to assessments and more.

This is exactly why Fullerton School District continues to use this product.

I work in PowerSchool (PS) every day. I register all students in the district every year (4000+) and we use InfoSnap for that portion of the program. It integrates so well with PS that it saves me hours upon hours of time for updating student information. I also maintain the integrity of our students’ information in PS. We use this to maintain our student information regarding persons that are allowed to pick up or drop off students at school. Medical Issues any student may have, such as allergies. Any medical attention they may need during the day that the nurses can help with. Any thing we need to know about a student is in this database and accessible by anyone that needs to have that information. I am able to use the registration to have the parents update information and then simply import the new / changed data into PowerSchool for everyone to have access. I know there is a whole other side of PS that the teachers use and they use it for grades and to keep the students and parents informed on assignments and test scores. I think PS is an amazing tool that makes managing information for all of these students a much easier process than we could do with any other system. I LOVE PS and INFOSNAP!

As Director of Guidance, PowerSchool is a tool that helps me manage all of my students and faculty in a single package. I am able to store all data and notes pertinent to a particular student, as well as be confident that appropriate information is also available to faculty, parents, and students through their portals.

Among the many strengths of the tool, PowerSchool is seamless and efficient offering a great amount of detail with a few simple clicks. For example, when a student is struggling in a class, I am easily able to look further than the numerical grade to see how it is being calculated to quickly identify if the problem is coming from a lack of understanding, a lack of assignment completion, or another issue all together. I can easily locate data concerning any particular student 24/7 from my home or my office.

We have made some minor customizations by adding buttons, alerts, and some custom screens that help us to categorize and store information unique our school. The ability to make minor changes like this to the out-of-the-box tool make it easy to create a customized resource that works best for our unique school.

I would recommend PowerSchool to colleagues, it is easy to learn, effective, and customizable.

As the Compliance and SIS data person I am constantly pulling data for various reports. My job relies on others putting the data in PowerSchool accurately and allowing me to pull quality data. I now am able to pull all the data from one source opposed to having to go to the attendance clerk to get truant students, or the deans to get incidents all these items are centrally located. This is a major benefit also because I don’t have to be on campus to get these data reports I can be at home or out of the city this information is always accessible.

PowerSchool‬ helps us keep up with student grades & information and delivers it back to parents & students via a portal, an app, and/or emails; it pairs up with ‪SchoolMessenger‬ to help us send announcements to parents; it feeds information to our Google accounts, our nutrition program, our library program, and Active Directory.

My (new-ish) favorite part of the PowerSchool platform is customization via insertion points and plugins. Insertion points allow users to customize pages without the need to rebuild links & other data each time a PowerSchool update changes that page’s coding.

Plugins allow PowerSchool to become modular, adding functionality simply by browsing for the zipped plugin file and clicking “Install”. And uninstalling is as simple as disabling the plugin by unchecking a checkbox. No more going back through the files in the web root, deleting a file here, a snippet of code there, etc.

I also love our state reporting support team. They are quickly reactive to new procedures and policies required of them by our state DOE.

We love that PowerSchool easily connects up to so many third party vendors! We use SchoolMessenger for our notification program, and it seamlessly integrates with PowerSchool right inside the interface. Even our state Department of Education has integrated a couple of its applications so that faculty sign in to PowerSchool and enter the DOE portals through SSO without further credentials.

We are implementing online registration and a health suite that will link up our state vaccine database with PowerSchool to keep nursing staff from dual data entry.

The ability to attach student documents is also very handy. Our Student Services Department is able to store and attach important medical information and 504 documents directly to the student’s page so that they are accessible digitally, not in a filing cabinet.

Another program we attached to PowerSchool allows us to turn our in-house SQL queries into embedded reports that PowerSchool administrators and / or teachers can run.

Whether by learning how to do it within their own organization or by purchasing customizations, PowerSchool users can take the program most anywhere they want to go.

Every SIS will have things some users like and some things they don’t. There is no product that will satisfy every user from the admin to the teacher to the substitute to the parent to the student. No SIS can do it all. However, whenever a great new product comes into our view that we consider purchasing, and they claim to be able to sync with our SIS, we ask if they work with PowerSchool, and the answer is always either “yes, we do” or “we are building that support now”. Having the ability to add the pieces PowerSchool doesn’t have in its stock product goes a long way in keeping stockholders and users happy.

I use powerschool daily. It is a great SIS. I utilize schoolmessenger, powerlunch and would not know how to function without them!

On a daily basis I utilize PowerSchool to track & maintain student data within our school district. I appreciate the ease of navigation through the various screens and from an administrator’s perspective having the capability to monitor all schools is critical.
The Help Desk & Training opportunities were critical in learning my position, as I had no one to train me on how to do my job. Without the support at Marcia Brennar(our Help Desk component) I would be lost.
I look forward to attending yearly, regional conferences and have always left w/ pages of notes, tips & tricks to take back to my district.
PowerSchool is an invaluable tool in my daily job tasks.

I use PowerSchool daily to access and update student records, attendance and lunch. It’s a great platform with many updates and developments that are driven by suggestions from customers.

I use the tool daily for reports to the state, enrollment, attendance and power lunch. I have found it is very easy to use. I would recommend if you are looking for an easy program with great support for your school – look no further powerschool is your choice!