Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Student Information Systems topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
District IT outlines PowerSchool dashboards, messaging and parent portal rollout
Summary
Michael Karrs, director of student information systems, briefed the board on PowerSchool analytics, PowerSchool Messenger, two-way messaging and the My Power Hub parent portal, citing large internal datasets, multilingual translation features and pilots at Arnold and Stewart.
Michael Karrs, director of student information systems, told the Cleveland City Schools Board that his team manages state reporting, assessments, rostering and analytics and is rolling out PowerSchool tools to give principals and families better access to student data.
"We now have right at 3,000,000,000 pieces of data in PowerSchool about our students," Karrs said, explaining the district uses dashboards and PowerSchool Insights to prepare internal reports and anticipate state accountability results. He said the district maintains roughly 12,000 contacts, about 7,000 students and 1,000 teachers/staff in the system and has sent more than 2,000,000 messages through its platforms.
Karrs described replacing a legacy system with PowerSchool Messenger for one-way broadcasts and piloting a two-way messaging feature that translates messages into parentspreferred languages and archives conversations. "You can text in English, but if the parent wanted Spanish, it translates before it gets to their text message. They text back in Spanish, and it translates it right back to me," he said, describing the features value for families without mobile apps. He also previewed PowerSchool forms (for enrollment and mid-year updates) and a parent portal called My Power Hub designed to surface relevant materials and translations.
Board members asked about the accuracy of Karrss early forecasting of state scores; Karrs said the states accountability rules are extensive and that his team uses Google BigQuery to automate rule logic. "Theres about a 130 page document of the rules that go into that," he said, and added that this year the district received a CDF file from the state roughly a month to six weeks before public release, allowing district staff to prepare.
Karrs said the district has piloted the two-way system at Arnold and Stewart and will continue phased implementation over the summer. Follow-up tasks include staff training, full rollout of PowerSchool forms for mid-July updates and monitoring dashboard accuracy against final state reports.
