Infinite Campus

The attendance portal for teacher is easy and quick. Only a click or two but the rest of this product is bad.

I would change almost everything about this product. IC is realistically more clicking. Enrolling a student who is new to the district takes over 28 clicks in Infinite Campus. If you buy this product, you will need to hire staff with higher skills - Besides Infinite Clicking, it is costs districts 2-3 times as much hiring more educated staff who have SQL programming knowledgle to do simple tasks like create custom mailing labels, create a printout of emergency contacts, create a withdrawal form, etc. For an SQL programmer the average salary is $71,000 per year vs $30,000 for a school secretary who can complete these tasks in other SIS systems. Moreover, Infinite Campus has yet to produce a presentable, professional progress report or report card for our district. I have spoken with Infinite Campus on numerous occasions and they said we would need to pay Infinite Campus Custom Development at $150 per hour if we want better report cards with a Letter grade and percent on the report card. To me, this item should be Industry Standard in the world of Student Information Systems. If you buy this product you will pay and then pay more for every little customization and you will continue paying annually for an inferior product.

I don’t think IC is structurally sound because “who has access to what” is based on Calendars instead of Schools. Therefore, if a secretary needs access to the PreSchool (Pre-registered students) AND the Elementary School, then you have to grant her access to ALL CALENDARS in IC. Which means she now has access to Middle School, High School, Adult Education, etc. In regards to FERPA, staff should only have access to things that are “need to know” The Elementary Secretary does not need to know any information on High School or Middle Schools students and yet you have to give her access to High School and Middle School due to IC’s database structure. IC’s workaround is to make her logout and log back in as a different user for each school. Other SIS's do not have this issue. This Calendar rights flaw is at the base of the Records Transfer Tool Right, which if we turn ON the Records Transfer feature it is a FERPA violation because it allows anyone with “Records Transfer” tool rights to see any student who transfers from any school in their district. Therefore many other districts have turned the Records Transfer feature OFF. The Feature (Records Transfer) was a huge selling point when convincing districts to switch to IC. Yet, we cannot turn it on without violating FERPA. Kentucky has created a work-around using SQL programming and has offered to share. However, there is a 10 hour or more window where even Kentucky’s work around is still a FERPA violation. FERPA is a federal law, therefore, any school that purchases IC cannot use this feature. Is this False Advertising? Furthermore, districts have been requesting a fix for the Records Transfer feature for almost 2 years. Since IC has yet to deliver a solution, I have little confidence that they will be able to produce any other Enhancement Request. This product is a joke. If you can, avoid at all costs.