Scheduling - K12 vs third party

Zoran Prastalo
Zoran Prastalo
Fourth Anniversary Name Dropper Facilitator 1
in Blackbaud K–12 Education Solutions™ General Discussions

I have been asked to look into scheduling for our school to replace/improve pretty much manual (Excel) scheduling process. Someone suggested using a third party scheduling software and importing it (probably manually) back to K12.

I couldn't get a clear answer why K12 scheduling wasn't used and at this point I need more information. It looks logical to me to use K12 scheduler.

I will appreciate any experience (good and bad), insight, suggestions.

Thank you,

Comments

  • Krista Gunzel
    Krista Gunzel
    Second Anniversary Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant

    @Zoran Prastalo I joined our school having no scheduling background and taught myself how to use the Scheduling tools. While the Knowledgebase documentation provides thorough instructions to set up and manage the course request and basic scheduling process, there is not a lot of documentation on how to optimize your schedule and minimize conflicts. For this, I did have support from colleagues who have done the manual scheduling process in prior years and their help was invaluable. My overall comment is that it is worth the time investment to make sure all the scheduling details are accurate as quality inputs to the schedule will produce a robust schedule and will reduce the number of times you need to run-adjust-run the scheduler.

    For reference, I am scheduling a middle school with 150 students and an upper school with 25- students. Hope that is helpful!

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