The Saanich school district took a risk when it went into the software business, and now the bold experiment is gone 鈥� taking 21脷2 years of work, 11 jobs and $1.5 million with it.
Last Thursday, the district announced it was folding the openStudent project, largely because it would cost too much money to make it work with the new sa国际传媒 Services Card.
In 2011, the district started working on a system for tracking student grades, attendance, registration and other records. Officials thought a made-in-sa国际传媒 system could be better and cheaper than anything bought from a big U.S. software company.
It hired project managers and programmers and went to work, using open-source tools that are readily available to create openStudent.
The province鈥檚 maligned sa国际传媒 Enterprise Student Information System was due to be retired in 2015, after costing $167 million over eight years. Its maker had been bought by another firm, which decided to stop supporting the system.
In 2012, the provincial government issued a request for proposals for a replacement for BCeSIS. Last November, it signed a deal with Fujitsu for a system called MyEducation sa国际传媒 The Saanich district forged ahead, convinced, it said, 鈥渢hat a sa国际传媒 non-profit solution would be much less costly and more suited to the real educational needs of sa国际传媒 schools.鈥�
At the time, that decision looked either gutsy or foolhardy.
In the recriminations that followed Thursday鈥檚 announcement, district officials said they were blindsided by the cost of making their system work with the services card, while Education Minister Peter Fassbender said his department was not to blame.
The ministry said the requirement for the system to work with the services card was something Saanich should have known because it was included in the 2012 request for proposals.
The district says it knew about the requirement, but the information was too vague to be useful and didn鈥檛 explain how expensive it would be.
Adapting openStudent to work with the services card would have cost Saanich at least another $1 million, on top of the $1.7 million it expected to spend finishing the project and the $1.5 million it had already spent.
The district says it has embraced the ministry鈥檚 call for local boards to be more entrepreneurial. It has one of the largest distance-education schools in the province and its business subsidiary, Online Learning sa国际传媒, sells courses abroad.
During the development of openStudent, prospects looked good, as other districts expressed interest in joining. But in the end, none of them backed up their interest with dollars. Saanich took the risk, and Saanich will have to take the loss.
District officials hope they can salvage something out of the debacle, perhaps by selling the software to other potential users.
Saanich鈥檚 idea was an appealing one: Use open-source tools to create a cheaper system that would meet the needs of sa国际传媒 schools. Its anticipated $1-million-a-year operating cost certainly compares favourably to the $9.4 million the province will pay Fujitsu.
Of course, 鈥渁nticipated鈥� costs and actual costs can be very different things. Just ask the builders of sa国际传媒鈥檚 fast ferries.
The project was a bold entrepreneurial move when it started, but the province鈥檚 decision to go with a major supplier stacked the deck against Saanich. The pressure on districts to conform to a provincewide system 鈥� even without the services-card issue 鈥� made it less likely that any other board would sign on.
Regardless of where blame lies, let us hope the collapse of openStudent doesn鈥檛 kill the entrepreneurial spirit of school boards.
