Lower Moreland recommends Panorama Education for district data warehouse; eSchool integration requires one-time setup

Lower Moreland Township School District staff recommended Panorama Education as the district’s new data warehouse and analytics partner to support a districtwide Multi-Tiered System of Supports (MTSS), and described a one-time technical integration to connect the district’s eSchool student information system.

At the Feb. 25 meeting, Mr. Cole, the staff presenter, summarized a multi-month vendor review that led to Panorama as the recommended partner. He described Panorama’s ability to integrate academic, attendance, behavior and social-emotional data into a single dashboard, its prebuilt evidence-based intervention library, and its survey tools. Mr. Cole said the product’s K–12 ESSA evidence rating and independent research showing test-score gains were factors in the recommendation.

Mr. Cole told the board the district’s intended timeline would begin product implementation pending approval, run spring pilot training and culture/climate surveys, then proceed to core-user training and full rollout for the following school year. He said the first-year budget for the March–June startup works out to roughly $43,000 per year on average, replacing a current product that costs about $26,000 annually. He also said the district negotiated a reduction off the sticker price.

Panorama’s “AI” and chat features were described as tools to help teachers plan lessons and help administrators identify students who show academic strength but social-emotional warning signs. Mr. Cole stressed that the platform is a decision-support tool and does not replace teacher judgment.

A technical integration issue was discussed: eSchool does not natively integrate with Panorama, so the district proposed a one-time build of a secure file-transfer protocol (SFTP) and configuration work to enable automated and regular uploads from eSchool into Panorama. Mr. Cole said the work would be done in coordination with the district’s PIMS coordinator and Panorama, described the integration as a one-time implementation cost (with future change requests billable), and said interim manual uploads could bridge the gap while the SFTP is built.

Board members asked about data privacy, parent access and teacher workflows; Mr. Cole said dashboards would be available to teachers for rostered students and that parent access was limited to survey participation (no parent dashboard). He said the system supports notes and intervention logging and that district staff will determine which assessments and data feeds are nonnegotiable for the build.

No contract vote was recorded at the Feb. 25 meeting; Mr. Cole presented the formal agreement for consideration later in the evening. Staff said vendor and integration work would include data migration, dashboard customization, training and ongoing support if approved.