Alma

"Glad we're using Alma"

Avantages: Unlike other SIS's, Alma actually looks and feels like it was made in the 2010's. The system is solid, and has essentially every feature a smaller school like ours would want (and many more that we don't need to use). The gradebook is excellent, and it's easy to transfer classes and students from year-to-year. Their customer service has been great (we accidentally deleted multiple report cards in different places the other day and they quickly and helpfully solved our issue by restoring to a backup), and they are continually adding features and improving the platform. And the cost has been at least 50% less than quotes we were getting from major competitors. Many reasons to switch to Alma.

Inconvénients: The latest transcripts update was helpful - there are still a couple of features we'd like on the transcripts front, but that's mostly because our school has a unique curriculum. This is totally just a personal preference, but I'd also like to be able to search for classes in the search feature in addition to contacts.

"ALMA is what we were looking for...."

Commentaires: This program has helped our students, staff, and parents utilize one student management system and use it to it's fullest potential. Each people group is able to pull from the system the vital information they need; some need more than others and the program has addressed all levels of information and all levels of user. That was important to us as we needed something that our staff could use to keep track of vital demographics, our teachers could use to track student grades and assignments and yet parents and students could log on and keep track of grades, test assessments and missing assignments. It meets the needs of every level.

Avantages: This product is very easy to use, in real time and easy to understand. Novel users can open up this SIS program and navigate in order to find the information they are looking for.

Inconvénients: We were one of the first public schools to sign on with ALMA, therefore we have evolved with the company. There have been some growing pains as we have evolved. The tech support teams have been gracious and very helpful in keeping us up to speed and rolling.

"We are happy with Alma"

Commentaires: We are very pleased with Alma and the implementation process.

Avantages: Its ease of use is perfect, Easily adaptable to our school environment.

Inconvénients: there are a few minor features that are missing

"Alma is not providing teachers with and easy to use platform for grading, attendance, etc."

Avantages: I like that I can look up any student in our school and see that student's schedule and current information.

Inconvénients: 1. Our students (Seniors especially) cannot get their current transcripts. This is troubling for many reasons. Perhaps the most important being their choices for scholarships and higher education will be affected by this. Students cannot apply for financial assistance through scholarships without current transcripts. I have personally spoken with at least three students who have missed out on scholarship opportunities, simply because they cannot access current transcripts.
2. Can't see overall student GPA
3. Can't see student class rank
4. Student Mobile usage is very confusing. Can't see grades the way they should.
5. Ease of access is horrible
6. No mobile app, and mobile website is very difficult to read
7. Not organized well
8. When emailing "all students" I cannot exclude certain classes; I can't email multiple classes at once without including EVERYONE
9. For attendance, it is very confusing. If a student is marked present first class, they are marked present for the entire day. This was clearly set up for use in an Elementary School. High School is different. We need to be able to see where our students are throughout the day.
10. Inputting grades takes many more steps than our previous system. There is no way to toggle between students with the keyboard.
11. There should be a way to block certain people from seeing certain information. At the beginning of the school year, student Social Security Numbers were viewable by any teacher or staff in our building.

"Student Information Systems"

Commentaires: The customer services is amazing! Any questions I have I am able to reach out and they will problem solve and help me figure it out.

Avantages: I like the ease of finding information for the students and being able to connect with the parents this way. Easy to pull reports that I can use to help with enrollment and decisions. Attendance tracking is very easy and great that parents can see the information up front.

Inconvénients: It needs improvements on the messaging capabilities. Currently you are able to message through the software but you can't create drafts of messages or even have record of who you sent the message to or what messages were sent.