Henry County Schools Overview - Home - iNACOL€¦ · Web viewThe Henry County School System, located approximately 30 miles south of Atlanta, serves a predominately suburban community

Henry County Schools

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

Digital Content System

RFI # 20151118

DATE OF ISSUE: November 1, 2015

RESPONSES DUE: November 18, 2015

HCS Contact: Dr. Brian Blanton Henry County Schools33 N. Zack Hinton ParkwayMcDonough, GA 30253770-957-7189bbl a n to n @ h e n r y .k 12 . g a .u s


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Table of Contents

1. Henry County Schools Overview …………………………………………………………………………………………..2

2. District Vision for Personalized Learning ……………………………………………………………………………….3

3. District Personalized Learning Implementation Plan …………………………………………………………….6

4. School-Level Personalized Learning Implementation Plan …………………………………………………….8

5. Specific Vision Related to this Request.………………………………………………………………………………...9

6. Request for Proposals Information Procedures ……………………………………………………………………10

7. Response Format ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….11


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1. Henry County Schools Overview The Henry County School System, located approximately 30 miles south of Atlanta, serves a predominately suburban community that experienced rapid growth over the past decade. While keeping pace with such growth has been a significant and constant challenge, the school system's mission, vision and goals have remained focused on continuous improvement in student achievement. Henry County Schools is committed to the belief that all students will learn at high levels. Henry County Schools values its stakeholders - students, employees, and parent and community partners - and believes that student success occurs when all stakeholders consistently support high expectations for student, school, and Henry County Schools performance. Significantly impacted by the economic throes of the 2000’s, Henry County once enjoyed a major boom as one of Atlanta’s fastest growing “bedroom communities.” New student enrollment necessitated building twenty-five schools over a ten-year period. During the economic and enrollment boom, Henry County Schools’ leadership focused on building these much-needed physical school facilities in order to house the new students. Out of necessity, leadership also focused on recruiting, hiring, and retaining teachers to staff both existing and newly built schools. Maintaining and expanding a school system to provide student seats took practical precedence over other areas of administration: curriculum planning, development, and revision; professional learning and evaluation; innovative programming and stakeholder involvement; and cutting-edge technological advances, though direly needed. Time constraints and financial prudence relegated these areas of instructional need to lesser priority. During the boom period, Henry County Schools maintained a solid level of instruction while meeting the challenge of supplying facilities for the 1200 new students enrolling annually. Recently, growth has stabilized, allowing the district to focus on strategic planning for long-term school improvement based on the district vision for personalized learning.

Since September 2013, Henry County Schools has been working in conjunction with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation through the Next Generation System Initiative for Personalized Learning. HCS applied for and has been granted two grants for the purpose of developing district- and school-level visions and strategic plans for operationalizing personalized learning. The district-level vision and strategic plan have been developed and the district-level work is underway. Six high-capacity schools are now engaged in the process of redesigning and preparing for launch in August 2015 based on the district vision of personalized learning.


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2. District Vision for Personalized Learning

For the past several years, HCS has worked to personalize the learning of its students by creating additional school options for them. The adoption of personalized learning-intensive instructional models is the next step in this multi-year effort to increase the number of educational options available to students. Whereas recent work has focused on giving students access to new schools and programs, HCS’ PL initiative focuses on dramatically increasing the options open to students within its existing school portfolio.

Ultimately, the goal is to better prepare all HCS students for college and career success. The district’s Personalized Learning initiatives will do this by:

Establishing a learning

environment in which students chart their own academic path with flexibility in place, time and pace, based upon mastery of core competencies.

Adopting a broader definition of “college and career readiness,” inclusive of both academic and behavioral skills that increase student engagement, ensure all students are challenged and supported within a rigorous framework, and require students to take ownership of their learning. To that end, the district will focus on and measure the 21st Century skills of communication, collaboration, creativity and critical thinking as overarching areas of competencies for all students.

Inspiring a culture of creators and achievers who synthesize information from many sources while engaging in real-world problem-solving through project-based learning.

Preparing students to be self-regulated, lifelong learners by giving them more freedom to chart their own academic path as they progress toward post-secondary goals.

Charging school and district staff to redesign the school experience and the day-to-day practices of a school system to better meet the diverse needs of our students by maximizing the impact of our teachers. Schools will offer flexibility for students to progress based on mastery, not master schedules bound by seat time and calendar days.

Realizing this vision will require change on the part of all Henry County stakeholders.


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Elements of Personalized Learning

In practice, the adoption of Personalized Learning will require many changes from the way Henry County currently operates. The following points describe what “personalized learning” will look like in Henry County once it has been fully implemented by the 2024-25 school year, organized along four dimensions The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation uses to define personalized learning: Learner Profiles, Personal Learning Plans, Individual Mastery, and Flexible Environments.

Learner profiles

The primary purposes of the Learner Profile is to help chart individual students’ personal learning pathways, and to measure progress along that path

Every student throughout the district will have a Learner Profile uniting data related to…o Formative and summative assessments (e.g., district, state, ACT, etc.)o “Learning path” to the present (e.g., course enrollments and grades)o 21st Century skill assessment (e.g., communication, collaboration, creativity, critical

thinking)o Behavior record (e.g., attendance, disciplinary actions)o College-going behaviors (e.g., application, completion of FAFSA, etc.)o Personal interests and goals (both academic and non-academic)o Personal learning style (e.g., preferred learning style(s), disabilities, etc.)

Everyone involved in a student’s academic life will have access to their Learner Profile, including teachers, parents/guardians, school counselors and administrators, and, most importantly, the student themselves. In principle, the Learner Profiles will be as transparent as possible, though not everyone will have access to all types of data.

We envision learner profiles as the tool that connects the team of people who support students through their educational experience, as well as the guiding tool in decision-making for students, parents and educators.

Personal Learning Plans

As part of their Learner Profile, every student will have a Personal Learning Plan, co-created by students, their families, and HCS staff; that includes long-term learning goals, an anticipated route to reach those goals, and a record of the paths the student has taken on their learning journey thus far.

Students will have the autonomy to define their learning plan at multiple levels: o Students will have the option of enrolling in their assigned community school, a district-run

virtual school (Impact Academy), a centralized career academy (Academy of Advanced Studies), or any combination of the three.

o Within their chosen school, students will have the ability to set their own “Learning Path” by choosing their program (e.g., academy), courses, and routes within courses to accomplish specific competencies.

Learning pathways will have “competency checkpoints” that assess mastery of competencies. Many checkpoints are unique to specific courses, but some – such as those around communication, creativity, collaboration and critical thinking – will be universal, and required of all Henry County Schools students.


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Individual Mastery

Administratively, the “course” will remain the fundamental unit of academic study and credit, though courses will be redefined as collections of competencies. This definition will change over the next five years. Course credit will be awarded once a student has demonstrated mastery of all of the course’s competencies.

Assessments will correspond to specific competencies and will be performance-based. Competencies and related assessment rubrics will be standardized throughout the district, designed by teacher leaders, with input from central district administration. Evidence of competency will be judged against a common rubric.

Students will be able to choose from multiple types of assessment for most competencies, though some competencies may allow for only a single assessment type. Collectively, the district’s teacher leaders will determine what assessment forms are acceptable for a given competency. Students should be allowed multiple opportunities to demonstrate mastery using varying forms of assessment. Courses will have pacing guidelines, but students may proceed at their own pace, taking assessments when they are prepared to, and advancing only once they have demonstrated mastery.

Flexible Environments

Over the course of their Henry County career, all students will receive a mix of face-to-face and digitally-enabled instruction. While the proportion of each will vary from student to student, all students will receive a minimum amount of instruction in each mode to ensure facility in both.

Henry County Schools will create an infrastructure and framework of credit to support anywhere, anytime learning for its students and employees.

Course pacing will be flexible, and may be completed in less or more than a given school year, but students will be counseled towards timely graduation. Students who are not making sufficient progress toward graduation will receive required intervention and support.

Henry County Schools will establish a framework wherein student progress is based upon mastery of content, not by time and place.

Our vision of personalized learning maximizes the best instructional practices teachers currently employ and marries them with innovative structures for time on task, curriculum delivery models, with a focus on 21st century skills. These transitions mean we move away from a focus on standardized multiple-choice testing as primary measures of progress and towards authentic performance assessments as measures of competency and mastery, which represents a significant change from current practice in Henry County Schools.


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3. District Personalized Learning Implementation Plan Overview

Henry County Schools’ plan to realize its vision for personalized learning consists of three interrelated initiatives:

1. Launch individual schools that are ready, willing, and able to implement PL in a school-led two-year instructional model design and implementation process, starting with secondary schools

2. Develop district-level supports that enable or ease school-level PL implementation at schools that have not yet adopted PL-intensive instructional models

3. Build community awareness, demand and readiness for PL among the broader HCS community

Each initiative is discussed in detail in the full district strategic plan for PL. Taken together, they balance Henry County Schools’ commitment to personalized learning with its longstanding culture of allowing a great degree of school autonomy within broad parameters, locally referred to as loose/tight defined autonomies.

The district’s role in this transformation is to provide appropriate guardrails for that autonomy, targeted resources that are most cost efficient at scale, and access to support and technical guidance to design and implement a meaningful plan to fundamentally change the mindset around the purpose and core actions of school. In short, school design will not be prescribed by the district; rather schools will be guided and supported by the district in their redesign process.

The overall PL implementation process is expected to last 10 years, with successive waves of 4-6 schools


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starting their two-year design and implementation process each year, beginning with the 2014-15 school year. Secondary schools will lead the way, building on the district’s early PL efforts; elementary schools will implement components of PL but will fully implement once the district has better defined and identified an elementary-level digital learning platform. By the start of the 2024-25 school year, every HCS school will be using an instructional model that exemplifies the district’s Personalized Learning vision. Engaging and leveraging community stakeholders and resources is an integral part of all phases of the HCS PL implementation plan. HCS has already laid groundwork with local businesses, post-secondary education institutions, state-level entities, and the community at large to open the dialog about PL and enable the operationalization of PL in HCS.

To jump-start the process, HCS has asked for and been granted funding from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to partially support its initial cohort of design schools. As the number of schools that have implemented PL grows, the expense and effort required by the design process is expected to fall, enabling the district to cover the cost through a combination of internal resource reallocation and additional financial support from the Henry County community.


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4. School-Level Implementation Plan: School Design Teams Launch New PL Models

The core of Henry County Schools’ Personalized Learning transformation process is the two-year individual school design processes each of its 51 school communities will undertake within the coming decade, which aims to overcome the pull of centuries-old educational habits by including purposeful professional learning, granting meaningful autonomy to make design decisions, and producing distinct school-wide visions for what success looks like.

Those school design processes are led by School Design Teams (SDTs) consisting of 6-12 administrators, teachers, students and other community members. SDTs will engage whole school communities to develop a school-level vision for personalized learning that is uniquely tailored to the needs of their students and the characteristics of their community. Throughout the process, they will periodically gather with other SDTs in the district to learn, challenge each other’s thinking, and share best practices as a professional learning community.

Though each cohort’s School Design Teams will benefit from collaboratively engaging in the productive struggle, excitement, and ultimate success of the design process together, the expectation is that their focus on developing a model that works for their particular staff, community, and students will create a diverse set of PL-intensive school models within the district.

A high-level overview of school design process activities can be found below:

The full strategic plan and additional information related to the district vision for personalized learning can be found at: www.henry.k12.ga.us/personalizedlearning

Based on this strategic plan, its focus areas, and strategic goals, the district has developed a specific vision related to school design support as identified below.

http://www.henry.k12.ga.us/personalizedlearning


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5. Specific Vision Related to this Request for Proposals:

Henry County Schools has already selected fifteen high-capacity schools to engage in the redesign process. To support the school, teachers, and students in these cohorts, and in the other district schools, the district has a vision to enable powerful and innovative student learning experiences. One way we hope to support this process is by providing highly engaging, rigorous, digital content in a way that enables and supports competency-based personalized learning.

Henry County Schools10

6. Request For Information: Process & Procedures

O v er v i e w : Henry County Schools requests information from vendors to inform a potential purchase decision for a Digital Content System. Specifically, the district seeks information from those vendors who can host a system that provides editable and customizable K-12 course content enabling instructors, district administrators, and program administrators to add content, delete content, edit content, and create custom courses in an easily edited and highly customizable digital content / learning management platform.

The Point of Contact for Henry County Schools will be Brian Blanton (bb l a n t on @ h e nr y. k 12 . g a. u s ).Please refer questions via email to Dr. Blanton regarding this RFI.

• Timelineso RFI issued on Nov. 3, 2015o Responses due by 5:00p.m EST. on November 18, 2015

• Number of copies and format:o 0ne electronic copy submitted to Brian Blanton at b b l a n to n @ h e n r y.k 12 . g a . us o Specifications:

8 ½” x 11” Not to exceed 100 consecutively numbered pages, including support materials

and tables. Some information may be submitted as addendum to the RFI as specified in the Request.


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7. Response FormatThe vendor’s RFI Response should be organized in the following manner:

Cover Letter

• Vendor should provide complete contact information• Letter must be signed by person authorized to represent the Vendor

Section 1: Executive Summary

The executive summary should discuss, at a very high level, the vendor’s understanding of HENRY COUNTY SCHOOLS’s vision as stated above. The vendor will give a brief overview as to why the vendor’s system is the best solution to further HENRY COUNTY SCHOOLS’ goals. The vendor does not need to explain in detail how specific features of the vendor’s solution will work. HENRY COUNTY SCHOOLS expects the vendor’s narrative and other materials in the ensuing sections of the vendor’s response to go into the appropriate detail.

Section 2: Vendor Information

This section should address the following at a minimum:

• Vendor History (brief)• Financial Stability• References - Vendors should list at least three K-12 district references.

• Reference information should include:o Contact name and contact informationo District size

• The products must have been installed and working at each reference location for atleast one year.

• At least two references should be similar in size to HENRY COUNTY SCHOOLS.

Vendors should expect HENRY COUNTY SCHOOLS to ask questions from these references. HENRY COUNTY SCHOOLS reserves the right to make on-site visits to these references for demonstrations of the proposed products upon invitation from that district.

Section 3: Response to Information Requested in Tables

Provide requested information in the tables. HENRY COUNTY SCHOOLS seeks a full understanding of the vendor’s capability to supply a fully-functioning SYSTEM. Please respond to information in the tables as follows:

• “Meets” means that the vendor’s product provides this functionality as part of the vendor’s indicated price without further fee or modification; please provide clarifying comments as needed

• “Does Not Meet” means that the vendor does not provide the full functionality. For all items marked “Does Not Meet”, please provide an explanation.


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Section 4: Solution Narrative

The vendor may include in this section any additional information/screenshots supporting the vendor’s solution.

Section 5: Support Narrative

In addition to submitting the requested information related to support in the tables, the vendor may also include in this section any additional information relating to support.

Section 6: Technical Requirements

In addition to submitting requested technical information in the tables, the vendor may also include in this section any additional information/screenshots supporting the vendor’s solution.

Section 7: Pricing

Understanding that Henry County Schools is not requesting a proposal for purchase and is only requesting information to inform potential purchase decisions, the vendor’s response should include, but not be limited to, the following:

• Estimated Pricing• Pricing Assumptions• Licensing/purchase options

o Per student (enrollment)o Per student, per segment (per course pricing)o Per school site licenseo Per district site licenseo District Program license (e.g. Impact Academy with approximately 200 students)

The estimated number of licenses for which we are requesting related information is: High School Students – 14,000Middle School Students – 10,000Elementary School Students – 18,000

Section 8: Other Vendor Materials

Vendors should use this section to provide HENRY COUNTY SCHOOLS any other relevant information concerning the vendor’s offerings, awards or other recognitions, or other relevant information.


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Vendor Capability Table

HENRY COUNTY SCHOOLS seeks a full understanding of the capabilities of each vendor to supply a fully-functioning SYSTEM. In the following table:

• “Meets” means that the vendor’s product provides this functionality as part of the vendor’s indicated price without further fee or modification; please provide clarifying comments as needed.

• “Does Not Meet” means that the vendor does not provide the full functionality. For all items marked “Does Not Meet”, please provide an explanation.

Meets

Does Not

Meet Response

Curriculum and CoursewareCapabilities

1. Provides editable and customizable course content for grades K-12 that enables instructors, district administrators, and program administrators to add content, delete content, edit content, and create custom courses in an easily edited and highly customizable learning management platform.

a. Provides the ability to integrate content from other vendors (LTI integration or other means). Please be specific.

b. Provides student users the ability to access other digital content platforms from a single login. Please be specific.

c. Provides primary grades (approximately grades K-2) content as described above.


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d. Provides elementary grades content as described above.

e. Provides middle grades content as described above.

f. Provides high school grades content as described above.

2. Provides instructional content that is both rigorous and highly engaging (incorporates interactive models, simulations, video, etc.).

3. Provides clear specification related to importation/creation and delivery of instructional content, courses and programs.

4. Instructional content can be easily revised and duplicated.


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5. Provides automated processes such as assigning grades, supporting collaboration, document management, assessment (indicate below).

a. Automation related to assigning grades

b. Automation that supports collaboration

c. Automation related to document management

d. Communication automation

e. Assessment related automation

6. Provides curriculum courseware that will do the following:

a. Create assessments in multiple formats which may include rubrics, multimedia and timed and/or dated elements.

b. Use applications without requiring user to obtain software or viewers.

c. Asynchronous tools such as e-mail, discussion threads, drop-box, journal, course email, text, announcements, social media integration,and document sharing.

d. Synchronous tools such as whiteboard, polling, live


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video/audio streaming, chat, and archiving.

e. Provide access to supporting tools (dictionaries, calculators, encyclopedias, etc.)

f. Translation ability for English Language Learners/English Speakers of Other Languages students in a minimum of five languages to be specified at a later time.

g. Provide text to speech language capabilities.

7. Courseware interoperates with student information system, instructional improvement system and other digital content systems.

a. Infinite Campus b. Schoolnetc. Other digital content systems LTI integrations, etc.

(Please provide a detailed response – particularly LTI integration with other content systems. These may be submitted as an addendum to this RFI)

8. Grade book exports to and fully integrates with Infinite Campus grade book. (Please provide a detailed response. This may be submitted as an addendum to the RFI)

9. Processes available for maintenance, upgrades, customizations, migration, and integration with other academic and administrative systems (without effecting availability of product during peak times or usage).


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10. Administrative support/tools which shall include:

a. Connects to Active Directory

b. User group, newsletters, and other communication from vendor to user.

c. Support from client services department.

d. 24 hours technical support for end user.

e. Access to manage academic content areas of courses(for facilitators and administrator).

f. Ability to amend student prescriptions (from diagnostics).

g. Role-based access to designated individuals (integrating with Acitve Directory and ability to support security groups).

h. Monitor access of student participation, enrollment, and status changes (for registrar, administrator, or other designated individuals).

11. Provides tracking system including notification of completed coursework, attendance, studentwork history, and student assistance needs.


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12. Tracking system tracking teacher interaction with students and student data.

13. Parent/Student environment that allows view of student progress.

14. The solution is web-based.

15. The solution is accessible via mobile phone devices (iOS, Android, Windows).

16. The solution is fully functional via mobile phone devices (iOS, Android, Windows).

17. The solution is accessible via tablet devices (iOS, Android, Windows).

18. The solution is fully functional via tablet devices (iOS, Android, Windows).

19. The solution incorporates an observer access component that allows parents/guardians to monitor student progress.

20. Observer / parent access component allows users to selfenroll without district involvement in the enrollment process (ie. Basedon unique identifier, etc.).

21. Courseware fully aligns with the most current Georgia standards (CCGPS / GPS) for core content areas and non-core elective content

22. Courseware fully aligns with the most current Georgia standards for


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Career Technical and Agricultural Education and will be responsive to upcoming changes to such standards.

23. The system provides comprehensive Elective course offerings aligned to the most current Georgia standards. (Please provide a detailed list).

24. The system provides College Board Advanced Placement courses (please describe which courses).

25. The system provides honors courses.

26. The system allows for the creation of an unlimited number of “course shells” from which teachers or administrators can build custom courses and also import existing courses from other platforms. (Please discuss in detail. This may be submitted as an addendum to the RFI).

27. Contracted services will include unlimited teacher / staff user accounts (or “seats”).

28. Instructional content and course elements can be easily moved between courses and within courses.

29. Henry County Schools can brand the system with district developedlogos.

30. The system provides data analytic capabilities including:Frequency of use by user / group Time of use by user / group Devices used to access system


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Robust report features.

31. The system provides a teacher portal demonstrating student performance, progress, etc. in courses

32. The system provides an embedded video conferencing / webinar tool.

33. Video conferencing / webinar tool interfaces with Microsoft Lync.

34. The system provides an “early warning” type reporting system to allow instructors and administrators to know when instructional intervention is necessary.

35. The system provides student performance indicators and progress monitoring.

36. The system allows teachers and administrators to send text messages to individual students and to groups of students based on teacher need (reminders) and based also based on automated process (assignment failed, missed assignment, etc.).

37. Text message features allow for logging of such text based communication.

38. The system provides a fully functioning Learning Object Repository that integrates fully with the learning platform and content.

39. Courseware complies with the most recent versions of SCORM, IMS, QTI, IMS Enterprise, IMS LIP, IEEE,


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LOM, iNACOL and other national and international specifications and standards organizations:

a. SCORM - Sharable Content Object Reference Model provides a technical architecture for learning objects to be easily shared across multiple learning delivery environments.

b. IMS - Instructional Management System is a system of defining and distributing open architecture interoperability specifications for e-learning products.

c. QTI - Question and Test Interoperability is designed to make it easier to transfer information such as questions, tests and results between different software applications.

d. IMS Enterprise - IMS Enterprise is a specification for transferring data about people and groups.

e. IMS LIP - Learner Information Package is a specification for a standard means of recording

information about learners.

f. LOM - Learning Object Metadata is data about an object which has a specified educational purpose or context.

40. The system is adaptive, moving students from assessment to the system’s most appropriate


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instructional intervention as needed(algorithmic intelligence, etc.).

41. The system provides embedded assessment tools and assessment items aligned to courses and content.

42. The system provides significant and comprehensive data analytics (e.g. analytic dashboard, etc.).

Professional Development & Training

43. Professional development plan to help facilitate HENRY COUNTY SCHOOLS’ roll-out, adoption and usage as part of our transformation process to competency-based personalized learning based on self-directed, self-regulated learners.

44. Thorough training documents, user guides and administration guides – available online and updated with all new releases

45. Onsite training

46. Distance Learning Workshops orWebinars

47. Online video tutorials for self-guided instruction

48. Online, context-sensitive, in-product help to support end-users

49. Train-the-trainer training model

50. End-user training programs are available


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51. First level support training for Help Desk personnel (that clearly defines first level expectations and

responsibilities).

Technical and Security

52. System provides LDAP Active Directory connections. Other possible connections would include Infinite Campus and Schoolnet.

53. Can provice a detailed Scope ofWork(SOW) and project plan.

54. Data requirements. Data file layout

55. System runs on a common platform (e.g. .NET, Silverlight)? Please indicate platforms.

56. Service level agreements are provided? (please provide detail)

57. Provides a forms creator to design reports and/or similar reporting functinality?

58. Provides internet based access for all modules?

59. Provides a help-desk work-flow management system for the product?

60. Limitations related to support time provided to district personnel? (please explain if answer is yes)

61. Accommodations and modifications are tracked?


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62. Databases are created using industry norms (SQL, DB2, Oracle, etc.)? Please indicate the database that will be used.

63. District can make customizations to the dashboards?

64. Can school systems request or build data cubes inside the application?

65. The system is compatible with multiple browsers including but not limited to:

a. Internet Explorerb. Chrome c. Safari

(Please specify which browserversions are supported.)

66. The system is device agnostic.

67. The vendor will propose and provide HCS with full documentation of the system architecture (i.e., provide complete technical architecture diagram).

68. Vendor will implement a system that can support 40,000 students and is scalable to accommodate growth in student population.

69. Vendor provides supportive data which gives data transfer statistics and band-width requirements for optimum use of the application based on proven concurrent users.

70. Vendor provides mobile access technology and security. System should be available on most mobile devices, (i.e. iOS, Android,


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Windows.).

71. System provides the ability to maintain a log of who logged into the software and accessed the records for a particular student, including what date and time, and changes made and audit trail capabilities.

72. System provides multiple levels of security – down to the record and/or field level.

73. Data is fully accessible(exportable in .pdf, .txt and.csv) to the District upon installation and throughout the term of the agreement. HCS requires availability to assessments throughout the year during regularschool hours (8:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., Monday-Friday ET). Report availability shall be 24 hours/day, except during scheduled maintenance periods.

74. The system is FERPA compliant.

75. The vendor agrees to the HCS requirement that all data collected, analyzed and/or disseminated by the instructional management system, remain the sole property of and for the exclusive use of HCS.

76. The data is fully accessible(exportable in .pdf, .txt and.csv) to the District upon installation and throughout the termof the agreement.

77. Technical Support and Services to include:

a. Integrity of data if


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server goes down.b. Server down time less

than .03%.c. Adequate servers and

backup to prevent database corruption and to provide restoration within two hours of data loss.

d. Product updates for the period of the contract

78. Help Desk Support includes:

a. 24 hour assistance and availability

b. Help desk statistics.

Online web-based and email support d. Phone support

c. Easy to locate up-to-date training resources available online and in hard copy formats.

d. Training materials utilizing multimedia (images, video, audio, etc.).

e. Availability of help desk logs.

f. Availability of help desk procedures in online and hard copy formats.

79. The system supports a data refresh on a scheduled cycle with access to transmitted data within an agree upon timeframe.

80. For ASP-hosted solutions, the hosting facility is SAS 70 Certified.

81. Support Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Vendor will specify which versions of these operating systems the vendor’s solution supports


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82. Support Microsoft Windows Server in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions

83. Depending on the hosting solution, support scalable enterprise configurations such as load- balancing and clustering of application servers and database servers

84. For SaaS hosting, provide 99% guaranteed uptime, outside or scheduled maintenance windows

85. For SaaS hosting, provide 5-second guaranteed page download time

86. Support SCORM 2004 (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) for importing and exporting learning resources

87. Provide a Web Services-based Application Programming Interface (API) to extend functionality and integrate third-party solutions

88. Allow the Henry County Schools to configure roles and permissions to control access to student data

89. Allow anonymous access to non- confidential public resources

90. Provide an audit history of user access in order to enforce accountability

91. For ASP hosting, provide 24 x 7 x365 onsite security staff, surveillance systems, and biometric identification for access to equipment


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92. For ASP hosting, provide both a public and secure DMZ, and hardened firewalls, load-balancers, switches, and systems

93. For ASP hosting, provide disaster recovery services

94. For ASP hosting, facility must beSAS 70 Certified

95. The system is HTML 5 based.

96. Planned scheduled maintenance and product releases allow HCS to preview prior to deployment.

97. Vendor Capability, Implementation and Support

98. The vendor’s solution is deployed in at least five (5) other school systems with a student population in excess of 20,000 students.

99. The vendor’s solution is deployed in at least two (2) school systems with a student population in excess of 40,000 students.

100. The vendor’s solution is in use in for at least three (3) years in at least five (5) school systems with a student population in excess of20,000 students.

101. Fully accessible through a web browser, and available 24/7 outside of regularly-scheduled maintenance and/or update windows


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102. Requires limited or no local client installation

103. User data can be exported to PDF, MS Excel or as a CSV file

104. Has a thorough software implementation methodology in place, ensuring technical success, and more importantly, user adoption for the client

105. The vendor can assign a primary point of contact as the technical resource to support the HCS account. The primary technical resource will respond to calls or emails within 24 hours to support the resolution of technical issues and troubleshoot all other issues and requests.

106. The vendor can provide and manage a separate test and training environment.

107. Provides a process for product enhancement requests.

108. Provide clear project team member roles and responsibilities for both vendor and Henry County Schools

109. Provide processes to ensure baseline setting of client expectations, on-time work products and budget management and the method by which each will be accomplished


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110. Provide a system for HENRY COUNTY SCHOOLS to report system bugs and issues.

111. Has on-going evaluation of program success — modified and adjusted as needed

112. Has on-going reporting of client satisfaction and clear escalation path for issue resolution

113. Has consultative services for data and instructional audits

114. Has experienced project management package to drive a successful implementation with an assigned Project Manager to oversee product implementation, training, and overall client support

a. Project Planning – vendor will provide a project plan that includes a schedule based on a Project Management best practice.

b. Project Design – vendor will provide HCS team with a full design that includes process flows and maps that outline the design of the system. The design should include detailed report mock ups to be approved prior to development / implementation

c. Development – the development of the system will be done with the HCS project team. The vendor will provide periodic (frequency determined by HCS project team) updates


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and stage gate reviews. This will also include vendor created test plans.

General Information

Communication regarding this solicitation, including questions or requests, should be sent by email to the attention of Dr. Brian Blanton, Instructional Technology Coordinator for HCS: bb l ant o n @ hen r y . k 12.ga . us

The estimated number of licenses for which we are requesting related information is: High School Students – 14,000Middle School Students – 10,000Elementary School Students – 18,000


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Henry County Schools Overview - Home - iNACOL€¦ · Web viewThe Henry County School System, located approximately 30 miles south of Atlanta, serves a predominately suburban community

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