School Information System

A school information system (SIS) is the record of truth: student demographics, enrollment, attendance, grades, transcripts, and guardian links — the data districts submit for state reporting and rely on for audits, transfers, and college applications. A school management system is the broader platform that wraps the SIS with operational modules like library, fees, hostel, transport, food service, and a learning management system. The two terms are often used interchangeably in vendor marketing, which is part of why evaluations get confused. OpenEduCat ships both layers: openeducat_core and openeducat_admission are the SIS, while the surrounding modules form the wider school management system. Districts that only need the data layer can run the SIS modules alone and add the rest later without re-platforming.

Yes. Demographics, program flags (IEP, 504, EL, free-and-reduced meals, military-connected, homeless/migrant), attendance codes, and course codes follow the NCES Common Data Element handbook so they map cleanly into state-level reporting systems and state longitudinal data systems. Pre-built extract jobs cover enrollment counts, ADA and ADM, discipline incidents, EL services, special education, gifted programs, and graduation cohort tracking. Each state still has its own submission file format (TSDS in Texas, CALPADS in California, PIMS in Pennsylvania, and so on) — we ship the field mappings, the registrar previews the extract in a dashboard, and signs off before transmission.

Yes. The openeducat_core data model is aligned to the Ed-Fi Alliance v3 unifying data standard, so districts already running an Ed-Fi Operational Data Store can map openeducat fields to Ed-Fi entities without rebuilding their reporting pipeline. Outbound extracts can be generated as CSV, XML, fixed-width, or pushed through the Ed-Fi REST API directly. Districts that have not adopted Ed-Fi can still use the model — it is becoming the de facto interoperability standard across US K-12 and is the most stable target to build state-reporting logic against.

FERPA is a compliance posture, not a vendor checkbox. OpenEduCat gives a district the controls FERPA expects: role-based access to education records, a complete audit trail of every read and write of a student record, custodial vs non-custodial parent visibility rules, directory-information opt-out flags per student, school-official designation tracking for third-party service providers, and self-hosted deployment so the district keeps physical control of where data lives. The US Department of Education's FERPA guidance for school officials is the canonical reference for what these controls need to do, and OpenEduCat's defaults are configured to align with it. Each district still owns the policy decisions — disclosure logs, annual notifications, and the directory-information definition — but the platform does not get in the way.

A typical 1,000-student district migration runs 90 to 120 days end to end: roughly 30 days to map source fields to openeducat_core and validate sample exports, 30 to 60 days to migrate historical records (transcripts, attendance history, discipline records, IEP metadata), and 30 days to run the new SIS in parallel before cutover. Larger districts and multi-school networks plan a full school year of overlap so they cut over between July state submissions and the August enrollment surge. The migration uses provided field maps for both PowerSchool and Infinite Campus exports, so the registrar is reviewing data quality rather than writing transformation scripts.

Yes. The SIS exposes a OneRoster v1.2 roster API and standard SSO (SAML 2.0 and OIDC), so any LMS that accepts OneRoster (Canvas, Schoology, Google Classroom, Microsoft School Data Sync) consumes enrollment and class lists directly from openeducat_core. Grade passback flows the other way through the LTI 1.3 Assignment and Grade Services endpoint, so course grades from the LMS land on the cumulative record without a manual export. The result: the SIS is the roster source of truth, and the LMS is one of many consumers.

The Community Edition of openeducat_core and openeducat_admission is LGPLv3 open-source — license cost is zero and the district pays only for hosting (self-host, on-prem, or a cloud region the district approves). The Enterprise Edition with vendor support, managed hosting, and SLAs is roughly $19 per staff user per month, which for most districts is materially lower than per-student SIS licensing. For a 1,000-student district with 80 staff users, that is approximately $18,000 per year all-in for Enterprise — versus roughly $12,000 to $18,000 per year just for the SIS license at typical PowerSchool or Infinite Campus pricing before implementation, training, and add-on modules. Over three years the gap usually widens because per-student SIS contracts include annual price increases, while OpenEduCat pricing is per-user and grows only when staff headcount grows.