SchoolMint

Parent Using SchoolMint

Kommentare: Overall, my experience with schoolmint is good. We love having all of the information at our fingertips.

Vorteile:

I like that all three of my children are on one account. It's very easy to click between children and view grades, absences, etc.

Nachteile:

It's difficult to recover username and password. I've always had to end up calling the school to have mine reset.

SMG in a K-8 setting

Kommentare: We have received great customer service with each rep that we have worked with at SMG.

Vorteile:

SMG allows us to collect data and determine trends. It also allows us to capture meeting notes and walkthrough data.

Nachteile:

We find the meeting templates to be limiting. Only the person who starts the meeting can add to the agenda topics.

Fine if minimal features are needed

Vorteile:

The interface is clean and aesthetically pleasing.

Nachteile:

Enroll is like an airplane that is being built while it is in the air for the first time. Features are incomplete and do not function properly. For example, applicants can use a Scheduling module to select appointment dates/times, but there is no way for the system admin to export that information to a CSV or Excel. Same with recommendations; they cannot be exported by the admin. So there is critical data points in the system that cannot be accessed by the admins. The product is very disappointing.

We have been using Smart Choice for many years and their products have exceeded our expectations!

Kommentare: I love all the customized aspects that meet our specific needs. Love the scheduling feature!
Most of all, I love the customer support!!!

Vorteile:

We use Smart Choice for our online applications and lotteries and recently added their services for permits, which is going great! I love the customer support. The reps are always quick and responsive to even the smallest issue and if my rep is unavailable, someone else responds on her behalf right away. Working collaboratively with the reps and developers is my favorite thing - no question goes unanswered, I can't say enough about how important and impressive that is. One of my favorite features which is absolutely worth the money is the scheduling feature!! What a time saver and so easy to use! I also love that I can create my own deliverables and customize how I use them. The lotteries have worked very well for us and we have a lot of custom priorities that the system handles very well.

Nachteile:

Like the other reviewers, I feel that creating reports is the most tedious and unintuitive part of the system. Lots and lots of trial and error in that area. We can finally duplicate a report which is helpful to a least have some of the info already available when creating a new report. Luckily the reps and develops are helpful, but I would like to be able to do more of it myself. Now that we use Smart Choice for our permits in addition to our lottery, it is a little confusing go and back and forth between the newer permit system and the old lottery system. It would be nice if they were they same. A minor thing I don't like in the new system, is that I can't see the parent notes without clicking on them, in the old system I could see all of the notes at the same time. Another thing that would be helpful is to be able to sort by more than one column header while looking at the application management page. Filters are useful for the most part, but sometimes the extra layer of sorting would be helpful.

Amazing! Our school administration and campus registrars love it!

Vorteile:

It is 100% online. This alone has saved our campuses many hours in going through paper applications and parents can chose more than 1 school at the same time without having to complete a new paper application. I love the conditional formatting, scheduling of messages and the defaulting of today's date enhancements added this year. We are able to get incoming students set up very quickly for testing or find potential needs for students earlier by collecting the information earlier in the process than we have in the past since the forms are so easy to use online. Wonderful tool to collect enrollment data and create projections when we start year 3. This helps locate the grades of greatest needs so we can concentrate marketing in the locations and grades we need as well.

Nachteile:

No way to stop users from creating multiple accounts year to year when they cannot remember their password or username - I have parents with 3 user names for 1 student and 3 siblings with different usernames. We send them the username in all communication, but parents still create new accounts! We would really love a view only or a way for certain groups to be able to print their own forms, such as Nurses or principals. We would not want them having the ability to make any changes, but if they could look at the information and print out anything pertaining to their department, then this would eliminate the need for the registrar to do it for them. The feeder campuses and administration would love a way to see which campus the re-enrolled student came from the prior year. For example, the Junior High campus cannot see which elementary campus the re-enrolled student came from. Since we are open boundaries, there are 5 elementaries that feed into 2 different junior highs. But the student can pick either junior high. So to get the records to the right school, I have to go through and find the info student by student since I have full access.