USD 443 approves transition from Skyward to Qumitive to modernize student records
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Summary
The USD 443 Board of Education voted unanimously June 23 to approve a multi-year transition from Skyward to Qumitive to centralize student records, migrate nine additional years of data and expand end-user customization and professional development tracking.
The USD 443 Board of Education on June 23 approved a transition plan to migrate the district’s student information system from Skyward to Qumitive, a move administrators said will consolidate student records and add user-level customization and staff training tools.
Board approval matters because the student information system holds all district student data and affects how administrators, office staff and teachers access records and run reports.
Victor, co-IT director for USD 443, told the board the district has been evaluating platforms for about two years after Skyward announced a migration path and that Qumitive offers enhanced custom reports and a professional-development (PD) tracking platform. “As you guys know, Skyward is our student information system, and so it holds all of our student data,” Victor said, explaining why the district is cautious about the migration. He said the plan includes one year of data cleaning followed by back-end access in a second semester and a target live date during the summer of the second transition year.
Administrators said the approved plan includes migrating an additional nine years of historical student data so records remain accessible from a single system. The board was told the state-wide vendor aims to migrate all Kansas districts by 2030; USD 443 staff said they neither wanted to be the first adopter nor the last. Samantha, district data specialist, was referenced as a staff lead on the technical work and expressed support for the timeline and features, administrators said.
Board members voted 6-0 to approve the transition plan. The motion was recorded as made by Tammy West and seconded by Jeff Hyres.
District staff said the migration will require re-creating custom reports and connections to other district applications because personalized Skyward customizations will not import directly into Qumitive. They emphasized a measured, year-long approach to reduce disruption, with the PD platform used to standardize training across buildings.
The plan includes no specific implementation cost detail in the board discussion; administrators said the additional cost shown on the plan relates to migrating nine extra years of data. District staff also noted a prior transition from a system called "Sassy" to Skyward, during which historical records were not migrated and had to be accessed separately — a situation they said they want to avoid this time.
The board did not set a firm district-wide go-live date beyond the general timeline and assigned district technology staff to lead the work. The approved motion was limited to adopting the presented transition plan; no additional contracts or budget amendments were taken at the June 23 meeting.
