At the beginning of the 2018-19 school year, the Nevada Joint Union High School District decided to switch from using eSchools to using Synergy with the core purpose of a more efficient student database.
Bear River’s former principal, Dr. Amy Besler, explained the reasoning behind the change.
“The Student Information System houses all of our student-related data, like attendance, grades, health information, schedules, and so forth,” she said. “Our contract with eSchools was slated to expire, and, after years of many challenges with eSchools, the district felt it was important to pursue other options. One of the main frustrations with eSchools was its lack of user-friendliness; in general, it was simply a sub-par product as Student Information Systems go.”
Dr. Besler went on to describe the ways Synergy is better than eSchools.
“Synergy is a far superior product in every way; it has tremendous capability to run a wide range of reports we cannot currently run and is, generally, much easier to use,” she said.
Bear River Math Teacher Vicki Burrell agreed that Synergy is an exceptional product.
“To me, I think the grading system is very comparable to what eSchools was, and it seems to be pretty easy to navigate [and] pretty self teaching,” she said.
However, Mrs. Burrell did mention one issue she had come across.
“Well, the main thing, and the biggest problem, which is a huge problem, is that students and parents don’t have access to it yet,” she said. “That’s huge. We’ve got grades in, and students should be able to see what they’re getting, and parents should be able to see what’s going on, and that’s a big problem. Now, I’ve been told that’s going to get taken care of this week, but we shall see.”
Bob Lyons, Tech Director at Bear River, explained this issue.
“The grades aren’t going to sync right now … so we did pay extra money to Edupoint, the company that owns Synergy, to make the sync happen [but] right now grades are not being passed back,” he said.
The teachers and administration weren’t the only ones facing difficulties. Helen Sands, a sophomore at Bear River, also had some trouble with the transition.
“I was supposed to take AP Biology this year, however, it conflicted with me taking Ag. Communications, which I need to be in that class because I’m a Bear River FFA officer,” she said. “So that was frustrating, and then I also wanted to take Spanish with Mason, so I also wasn’t able to take AP Biology second period, which is the other time it was offered.”
Freshman Grace Ballou also encountered schedule troubles.
“I got a schedule change on the second day,” she said. “I was in the wrong math class, and they had it changed by the next day.”
Dr. Besler shared her final thoughts on the matter.
“New systems are frustrating and time-consuming to learn and understand, but we know that this system is far superior to what we had before, and, once we have the kinks ironed out, we will all be much happier with it.”
