While all institutions face administrative challenges, elementary, middle and high schools face unique and often high-stakes administrative challenges that are diverse in nature. Traditionally, school administrators needed to keep track of what one might expect (e.g., student attendance records, discipline and merit reports and of course, report cards). Today, school administrators find themselves managing everything from the lost and found items to contact information for increasingly complex family units and childcare situations. For example, while contact information for two parents—a mom and a dad—may have been sufficient in the past, today, contact and authorized pick-up information for children needs to be flexible enough to account for two moms or two dads, grandparents and extended family members, and of course, authorized childcare personnel. Administrators are also increasingly faced with other tasks (e.g., managing fundraising or enrollment drives).

MySchool is a robust school management software option that is well suited to respond to the increasingly complex administrative needs of K-12 schools in the twenty-first century. Among other applications, MySchool offers the following: academic reporting; admissions, enrollment and assessment management; attendance tracking; behavior management; bookstore, cafeteria, classroom and clinic management tools; curriculum management; events tracking; facility management; faculty and staff management; financial management; fundraising management; scheduling; student information and records management; a parent portal; and the ability to coordinate one’s system with the local school district. Unlike many other options, MySchool is designed to be used with public or private K-12 schools as well as higher education institutions.

• Usability. My School has an easy-to-use, intuitive interface that administrators consistently praise.

• Maintainability. A cloud-based school management solution, MySchool is subject to regular updates and as a result, it has proven well equipped to keep up with the demands of the institutions it aims to support.

• Performance. MySchool is a high performing software program that provides fast access to large numbers of student and parent records.

• Integration Ease. An all-in-one system, integration is not always a concern (e.g., many institutions rely on MySchool for accounts management as well); notably, it is designed to work with Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer 9 and to be used on mobile devices.
• Functionality. Despite the fact that MySchool is a multi functional software solution that supports everything from student tracking to staff management to fundraising activities, user reviews suggest that its functions perform well across the board.

• Support. MySchool has dedicated online support and three help lines—one based in North America, one in the United Kingdom and one in Europe; their multilingual staff are always on call to support subscribers.

Pros

What customers like about MySchool:

• It is an all-in-one system that can support nearly all of a school’s administrative needs.
• Its interface is attractive with great backend and frontend features.
• Developed and based in Europe, it must comply with Europe’s somewhat stricter security regulations.
• It offers a free demo.
• It is relatively affordable: MySchool’s management package starts at $12 per student per year; to add on communications, the fee is $21 per student per year and the package includes free data migration; to add on enterprise software (recommended for larger institutions with complex integration concerns), the fee is $28 per student per year and the package also includes free data migration).

Cons

What clients do not like about MySchool:

• No library management support, so any school relying on MySchool will need to purchase separate library management software.