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Got an email today from one of my favorite open source solutions, Centre. I’m not sure if it just came out of beta, or they’ve released a new version, but I recieved an email from them today.

For those of you not familar with it, Centre is a open source Student Information System (SIS). It’s sort of like Powerschool, only without any of the expenses (and no fashionable Apple logo either). They have a full demo of it on their web site so I spent a bit of time playing around with it. Let me be brutally honest. It is not as attractive as Powerschool. It does not have all the features as Powerschool. It isn’t as quick as Powerschool. However, it will cost you tens of thousands of dollars less than Powerschool.

If you’ve already committed to an SIS, this may not be what makes you switch from it. However, if your school doesn’t have an SIS yet, this would be a great place to start. Or if your school is tired of over spending, then you might want to consider it. There’s no question, the system is flexible. Since the code is open source, you can always tweak it to suit your needs. It doesn’t have every feature out there, but it does have attendance, grades, demographics, scheduling and so on. It looks like a solid system that’s definitely worth a look.

Here’s the list of features that they emailed to me:

Centre is a full-featured system that is in many aspects even more
powerful and flexible than its proprietary counterparts.
* Centre is completely web-based. Teachers, administrators,
staff, parents, and students can access the school’s data from any
internet-enabled computer.

* Centre can also be scaled for a school or district of any size
– from a school of 10 students to a massive district of over 500,000
students.

* Centre can be run on Mac OS X, Linux, or Windows, so your
school won’t have to spend money to purchase new hardware.

* Centre includes a powerful and efficient scheduler that will
schedule a large high school in minutes where other systems might
take hours or days. The scheduler builds student schedules based on
course requests and alerts you of conflicts and possible resolutions
from the first stage of scheduling.

* Centre keeps track of period-based and day-based attendance.
Teachers can take attendance online each period or administrators can
efficiently input attendance through an administrative component.
Reports can be generated on-the-fly with daily attendance figures
important for state reporting.

* Centre tracks student grades and generates easily customizable
report cards. Centre also includes a teacher gradebook and teachers
can print progress reports for their students. And, of course, the
gradebook is integrated into scheduling system, so teachers never
have to setup a class list. The gradebook is also integrated into
the grading and eligibility system so teachers can post their
eligibility and final grades with a click of a button.

* Centre is built to be flexible. Every code is user-defined.
Schools can setup any marking period structure they choose with any
number of semesters and any number of quarters in each semester.
Furthermore, schools can collect information important to them
through the powerful custom fields components of Centre.

* Student searching is another powerful aspect of Centre. You
can search for students based on not only their demographic
information, but also custom information, their course schedule,
course requests, grades, GPA, class rank, absences, and eligibility.
This means you can build your own custom reports on-the-fly and group
your students in ways meaningful to your school.

* Centre is capable of printing form letters, report cards,
requests sheets, and progress reports in bulk. Mailing labels can be
printed on any of these printouts. Furthermore, any screen in Centre
can be exported to a PDF document and any data list can be exported
to an excel spreadsheet with the click of a button.

* Even though Centre is built to be consistent in design and is
very intuitive, help documentation is available for every program in
Centre and for every user profile. Help can be displayed for any
program without disrupting the user’s session so users can read the
program directions while using the program.

* Centre can be easily customized to meet your school’s
specialized requirements. Your school can setup any number of user-
defined student fields to track student data important to your
school. And, for a reasonable fee, Partners of The Miller Group will
customize Centre to meet your needs. You can also make these
customizations yourself, since the product is open source.

* Partners of The Miller Group can install Centre, import your
existing data, train your staff, and provide your school with
support, meaning no one at your school needs to have any technical
expertise for your school to use Centre and your existing technology
staff can be freed up for other projects.

Don’t take my word for it though. It’s free! Check it out for yourself!