Schools and Parents Can ‘Go Green’ With New Offering From STI

STI adds new features to its student information system, InformationNOW^®,
to help schools eliminate paper waste and conserve energy
while saving money by offering parents more choices

Mobile, Ala. (Jan. 13, 2010) – Here’s a simple, quick way for schools to cut costs in these challenging times: convert all paper-based mailings to online communications. STI, a leader in K-12 education data management solutions, is offering new features through its Web-based student information system, InformationNOW^®, to help schools save time, resources, and money on mailing information to parents and guardians. The new set of features, called “Go Green,” is provided with InformationNOW at no additional charge to schools or parents.

Schools incur significant costs when producing paper-based communications to parents. Costs for paper, printing and postage can add up quickly when sending out information to several thousand parents and guardians throughout the school year. Schools can save an estimated $5,000 per 500 students by switching to online communications with parents. With more than 70 percent of U.S. households with Internet access, according to a 2009 Nielson survey, online communication is now a viable alternative for schools and parents.

Schools nationwide are considering the benefits of moving toward a paperless educational environment, not only to save costs and energy, but to embrace the reality of living in a digital age where banking, utility payments, phone conversations, and more are all occurring online. Important documents no longer need to be mailed; they can be made available in secure electronic formats accessible anytime, anywhere. STI is committed to providing the most innovative, cost-effective and eco-friendly product available for K-12 education. STI’s InformationNOW with Go Green represents an important step school leaders can take toward meeting their 21st century educational goals.

Because the Go Green features are included with InformationNOW, schools can easily offer the paperless options to parents. Using Go Green, parents and guardians can get involved in the efforts of their school and local community to reduce their carbon footprints and demonstrate social responsibility to their children. They can elect to receive student report cards, progress reports, school notices, and other communications through the online portal in InformationNOW. E-mail alerts notify “Green” parents when new documents are ready to be viewed online. Parents and students can also request online courses via the Web portal rather than filling out paper forms.

In the spring, additional Go Green features will be available, including the option for parents to receive automatic alerts through an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed in their preferred RSS readers.

InformationNOW is a Web-based system that offers a complete, integrated solution for the collection, analysis and reporting of student data, accessible through a customizable portal for each user. It streamlines school administrative functions and allows administrators, teachers and parents anytime, anywhere access to critical information. By providing quick access and insight into student data, school leaders can make more informed decisions for efficient and effective school management, and educators can maximize student learning by better understanding their students’ needs. Parents can be more involved in their children’s education by having greater access to student and school information and a forum to communicate with their children’s teachers. Other modules for InformationNOW allow for management of lunch program services, health services, school-home communications, data analytics tools, tuition billing, and donor development.

More Information

For more information about InformationNOW or STI’s other product and service offerings, visit www.sti-k12.com or call 800-844-0884.

About STI

STI is a leading provider of Education Data Management solutions to the K-12 market. STI’s fully integrated suite of Web-based products addresses attendance, scheduling, discipline, grade reporting, state reporting, financial management, student health, parent/teacher communications, special education, formative assessment, and data mining. Additionally, STI offers a comprehensive program of professional development services to help administrators and teachers with school improvement initiatives such as developing data-driven response-to-intervention and formative assessment programs. More than 8,000 schools in 50 states and several countries use STI solutions. The company was founded in 1982 and is headquartered in Mobile, Ala.

Contacts

STI
Jenna Wood
800-844-0884, x1003
jwood at sti-k12 dot com
www.sti-k12.com

C. Blohm & Associates, Inc.
Kristen Plemon
608-839-9805
kristen at cblohm dot com
www.cblohm.com