Hillsborough County Public Schools (FL) Selects Synergy Education Platform

Nation’s eighth largest school district seeks national leader for enterprise student data management

Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS) has selected the industry-leading Synergy® Education Platform by Edupoint® Educational Systems for its K-12 student information management needs. The district’s Synergy solution will include Synergy Student Information System and Synergy Special Education in a cloud-hosted environment. HCPS serves approximately 220,000 students in the West Central Florida area and is the eighth largest district in the country.

“It was time to retire our district-developed mainframe-based system and replace it with a modern, expandable solution,” said Rick Laneau, General Manager of Information Technology for Hillsborough. “Giving parents and students better access to their educational records from anywhere at any time was a priority, and we determined that Synergy was strong in that area as well as being based on modern technology standards. We liked the fact that we can use the system’s Ed-Fi and OneRoster compliance to consolidate our interfaces with third parties. Edupoint has large district experience in 20 other states, so we felt that the company would be capable of meeting our particular needs as a large Florida district.”

In seeking a new system, Hillsborough County conducted a thorough evaluation process that lasted over a year. After verifying the need to replace the mainframe, the district put out a request for information to see what commercial products were available. Half a dozen vendors responded and gave onsite presentations to a committee of more than 50 stakeholders. The evaluation team built a list of district requirements based on those presentations, and HCPS issued a request for proposal. After evaluating submissions from six vendors over six months, the district selected Synergy Education Platform as the most feature-rich and cost-effective solution.

“With Synergy Education Platform, Hillsborough County Public Schools is getting a future-ready student data management solution that can not only expand and evolve as the district’s needs change over time, but is also designed to maximize parent and student access and engagement,” said Bob Weathers, Founder and CEO at Edupoint. “We are delighted to be serving the HCPS community and helping the district support families through the K-12 journey.”