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PGCPS to move ESSER-funded digital tools into operating budget; seeks multi-year ERP upgrade
Summary
District technology officials told the board that ESSER grant dollars that paid for student and staff digital tools have expired and must be transitioned into the operating budget. The administration also proposed a multi-year enterprise resource planning (ERP) modernization with an estimated implementation cost of about $8.9 million.
Prince George's County Public Schools' chief information officer told the Board of Education on Feb. 6 that the district must fold several ESSER-funded systems and licenses into the FY 2026 operating budget and that the business information system requires a multiyear upgrade.
Why it matters: the changes affect recurring operating costs for student information, digital classroom tools and the district's finance and HR backbone. The district also flagged cybersecurity and long-term sustainability of its one-to-one device program as ongoing priorities.
Chief Information Officer Andy Zuckerman summarized the technology request as three principal items: the ERP (enterprise resource planning) modernization for the district's finance, payroll and HR systems; Synergy, the student information system; and a set of recurring digital-tool licenses that had been paid with federal ESSER funds through September 2024.
Zuckerman said the ERP implementation requires an external implementer and several years of work; the rough implementation price cited was about $8.9 million for a one-year implementation engagement and additional implementation expense in follow-up years. He said the district currently pays about $2.2 million annually for the on-premises Oracle system and that cloud-based migration would add a modest annual license increase but carries sizeable one-time implementation costs.
On the student information system, Zuckerman said the district moved from an older, on-premises system to Synergy and that the new annual licensing is higher (about $2.7 million) and was previously paid via ESSER; now the district must include that recurring cost in the operating budget. Several other digital tools—Google for Education, classroom management and remote meeting tools, and other platform licenses—also transition from ESSER into operating spending.
Zuckerman and other administrators said the ESSER expiration (federal funds expired Sept. 30, 2024) created an unavoidable fiscal shift into the operating budget. They also described steps taken to reduce device breakage and sustain a one-to-one Chromebook program, including moving devices into school carts in many buildings and shifting to a lease-purchase approach for hardware replacement.
Administrators said cybersecurity investments are embedded across technology budgets—endpoint protection, multifactor authentication, web filtering and firewall protection—and that detailed cybersecurity configuration and controls are handled in restricted briefings because specifics can be sensitive.
Ending: District technology leaders said they will provide further cost detail and implementation timelines for the ERP project and requested board backing to include the recurring license costs and implementation deposits in the FY 2026 plan.
