Hillsborough Schools Weighs Options After Messy Tech Rollout

Government Technology | By Jack Evans | October 3, 2024

Implementation of the Florida school district’s student information system, purchased in 2019, was disrupted by COVID-19 and multiple superintendent changes. A consultant said the vendor has failed to deliver on expectations.

After weeks of consternation over the disastrous rollout of Hillsborough County Public Schools’ new software system, which has caused headaches for teachers and other staff handling some of the district’s most important student records, it looks like the system is here to stay — for now.

But while the school district tries to make the program, called Synergy, work for the time being, it’ll also look to the market for other options. If it lands on a new option soon enough, it could be ready for the 2025-26 school year.

The district bought Synergy in 2019 for $8.5 million. The off-the-shelf student information system — which tracks attendance, transcripts and legally mandated reports for students with special needs — was meant to replace the aging program the district built in-house more than three decades ago.

But nothing about its rollout has been smooth. Consultants from the tech firm MGT, which the district has hired to help it clean up the mess, pointed to a slew of factors within and outside Hillsborough schools during a presentation at Tuesday’s school board meeting.

The pandemic delayed the district’s plans for Synergy, they noted. Turnover at the district — the Synergy purchase was made two superintendents ago — and a lack of formalized project management led to a sloppy launch with insufficient training for teachers and staff. And Synergy’s manufacturer, Edupoint, has failed to deliver on everything in its agreements with the district.

School board members and district officials have cited two major categories of concern. There’s the strain on teachers and staff of extra work created by the system’s failings. And there’s worry that an unreliable system could cause damaging ripple effects: inaccurate transcripts harming students’ post-graduation prospects, faulty attendance counts jeopardizing state funding, incomplete forms for special-needs students running afoul of the law.

“I’m not going to sit on this board and accept our treatment of our staff like this anymore,” school board member Patti Rendon said Tuesday.

Reverting to the district’s old system is not an option, though. With aging hardware and out-of-date code that would create security issues, trying to bring back the old way would likely be “a colossal failure,” said Serena Sacks-Mandel, one of the MGT consultants.

The best course of action, the consultants said, is to plug the major holes in Synergy while looking for a program that better suits the district. The district needs to start looking now if it wants a different program next year, they said.

Meanwhile, Rendon on Tuesday suggested that the district consider legal action against Edupoint, should it fail to deliver on its promises to the district.

“I think we need to take a stand on this,” she said. “I think this is just outrageous and egregious.”