Follett Software Company announced this week that five more K-12 public school districts in the state of Massachusetts have selected Aspen as their student information platform. Aspen – a web-based customizable student information system (SIS) for school and district administration, learning and communications that also delivers state reporting requirements – is now used by a total of 67 districts in Massachusetts, comprising 432 schools and more than 242,000 students.
The five new districts to Aspen are:
- Franklin Public Schools – 7 schools, 6,120 students
- Attleboro Public Schools – 9 schools, 5,884 students
- Braintree School District – 9 schools, 5,246 students
- Wilmington Public Schools – 8 schools, 3,783 students
- Swampscott School District – 7 schools, 2,257 students
According to Neal Ellis, technology coordinator for Wilmington Public Schools, his district’s selection committee reviewed all the vendors on the state’s bid list to determine which ones met the technical and functional requirements. Ultimately, he said, the committee kept coming back to one vendor.
“There didn’t seem to be any other vendor that had all of the pieces we were seeking,” Ellis said. “Once we started looking at the Aspen product in more depth, we found that it not only had all of the pieces we wanted, but it had pieces that we didn’t even know were possible.”
Finding an SIS with such features as assessment plus viewing and uploading documents were originally thought to be “pie-in-the-sky” pursuits for the Wilmington committee.
“We didn’t expect to find them, but with Aspen they were already included,” Ellis said. “We were surprised to find a vendor’s product that was as progressive technically as Aspen.”
