District presents Synergy analytics dashboards and an iterative plan for monitoring essential practices

Dr. Brian Beckley told the Everett Public Schools board on March 17 that the district’s initiative to monitor essential practices uses Synergy’s analytics module to create dashboards tailored to distinct user roles — district directors, principals and teachers — so the same underlying data can be displayed differently for different needs.

"At its core of this framework is essential practices," Beckley said. He described a three‑year plan: identify student priority outcomes and essential practices (year 1), learn the analytics tool and build draft dashboards with stakeholder feedback (year 2), then scale dashboards and refine ongoing use (year 3).

Beckley emphasized stakeholder engagement across departments, saying project teams meet roughly twice a month with the vendor and with internal partners to prototype dashboards, capture 'messy' draft ideas and convert them into working dashboards. "We're learning by doing — our partners at EduPoint are working alongside us to build initial dashboards," he said.

He gave the multilingual (ML) team as an example of role‑based needs: a district categorical director, a principal and a classroom teacher each can view the same dataset through different landing pages and drill‑downs tailored to their decisions. Beckley cautioned against overloading single dashboards and described tabbed designs and pilot landing pages for attendance, demographics and discipline.

Directors asked technical questions about Synergy features and data integrations. When a director asked what a "smart find" is, Beckley explained it as a Synergy feature to locate information. He told the board the district is working to integrate Panorama and other external datasets into Synergy so users won’t have to visit multiple systems.

When asked whether Everett compares its dashboards and training with other districts, Beckley said many districts use Synergy but cited that Everett often pushes the vendor with advanced use cases. "In some cases, we're the model example district for others about how we're trying to utilize the system," he said.

Beckley said measures of success for the initiative include the number of dashboards created and active stakeholder feedback loops; he said the district will continue to expand dashboard work into operational areas (human resources and other departments) and to provide train‑the‑trainer sessions and on‑demand resources.

Board members praised the collaborative approach and encouraged the district to continue centering teachers in rollout planning; Beckley said the developmental cycle will continue and that additional initiative presentations are scheduled for April.