Hillsborough schools land on new tech system, but frustration remains
By Jack Evans
After months of exasperation over the bungled rollout of a faulty new software system that underpins many important functions, Hillsborough County Public Schools has a light at the end of the tunnel.
On Tuesday, school board members approved $600,000 for a new software system that district staff believes will be more reliable and easier to use, along with $750,000 for consultants to help the district manage the implementation of that system.
The move doesn’t mean that the much-decried Synergy program will go away immediately. As expected, teachers and staff will still have to use that student information system — which tracks attendance, transcripts and legally mandated reports for students with special needs, among other key functions — through the end of this school year.
Nor was it entirely satisfying for school board members, who pilloried the district’s information technology division, worried over training for teachers and staff and complained that, for the next year, it’ll be paying for two systems meant to do the same thing.
But moving on to the new system, Focus, was the only option, they decided. It’s the quickest way to get out of what district and union leaders have portrayed as a torturous situation for teachers and staff, who have borne the brunt of Synergy’s failures.
“There’s a lot of other issues that need to be addressed, whether it’s internally with staff knowledge and capacity or with the contract with Synergy, but we asked the superintendent weeks ago to bring us a solution,” board member Stacy Hahn said. “No one wants to spend another dime, but we have to solve the problem.”
Focus is far more popular in Florida — it’s used in 39 other school districts — and was the runner-up in 2019 when the district paid more than $8.5 million for Synergy to replace the aging system it had built in-house decades earlier. After the pandemic and technological delays, Synergy launched at the beginning of this school year.
But problems were manifold. Training was scattershot and Synergy’s maker, Edupoint, had failed to deliver on some of its promises to the district, resulting in a system that sometimes didn’t work and that many found hard to use even when it did. Board members have suggested legal action and asked again on Tuesday about being reimbursed by Synergy.
“We will not be milked,” board member Karen Perez said. “We are not a bank. You will not come here and sell us a program that does not work and take our money without some ramifications.”
Though teachers and staff will be rid of Synergy by summer, Superintendent Van Ayres said the district will still need the program for behind-the-scenes work in the months following that, and will keep paying for it through 2025. The $600,000 approved Tuesday will get Focus off the ground. The company waived what would have been a $1.3 million licensing fee for the 2025-26 school year, though the district will have to pay a similar fee in subsequent years.
Another complicating factor has been the district’s lack of a project management office. Around the same time it bought Synergy, the district, in a cost-cutting measure, dismantled the division that would have overseen its implementation. The district hired the tech consulting firm MGT in October to help make Synergy more usable for the time being, and the $750,000 approved Tuesday will keep the firm on board as it rolls out Focus.
The Synergy mess has made it clear that the district needs to make internal changes, board members and district officials said Tuesday, particularly to an IT department that isn’t set up to preside over the implementation of a district-wide project. Some board members questioned the district’s ability to effectively train and prepare teachers and staff given its failure to do so less than a year ago.
District staff and consultants said they’re optimistic, with MGT providing project-management scaffolding the district lacks. They pointed to familiarity with Focus — the district previously used its scheduling software, which will be the first thing launched in January, to aid in the creation of schedules for the 2025-26 school year.
But they acknowledged the pressure to get it right this time.
“We cannot get this wrong,” Ayres said.
Jack Evans is a reporter covering Pinellas County. He can be reached at jevans@tampabay.com.
Hillsborough schools land on new tech system, but frustration remains