WSIPC
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| Formation | 1967 |
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| Type | Non-Profit |
| Purpose | Technology for Educational Communities |
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Key people
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Marty Daybell (CEO) |
| Slogan | Inspired by education. Empowered by technology. |
| Mission | "WSIPC provides a comprehensive, relevant and fiscally responsible suite of technology services so our partners may focus on their educational mission." |
| Website | www.wsipc.org |
The Washington School Information Processing Cooperative (WSIPC) is a public non-profit cooperative that provides K-12 public and private schools with technology solutions, data management tools, services, training and support, purchasing and procurement services. WSIPC services schools throughout the northwest in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska, providing benefits to 9 Educational Service Districts and more than 300 school districts, who represent over 1 million students.
WSIPC serves school districts with complete information management systems for fiscal, human resources as well as a full student information system (SIS) data. The main software package deployed by WSIPC is the Skyward School Management System.
Starting in 2009 WSIPC was given the sole responsibility to host WASWUG Spring and WASWUG Fall, two conferences that are in place for WSIPC members to learn more about the Skyward product suite and attend breakout sessions.
In 1967, ten Washington school districts formed a cooperative to share software development and hardware costs, and provide centralized technological support. The result of this collaboration was WSIPC, a public agency that continues to provide information services at a low cost to school districts in the northwest.
WSIPC registered the domain name WEDNET.EDU in 1992 in order to begin connecting all public schools in Washington state. This eventually became the nation’s first statewide high-speed, high-capacity network for schools, which was made possible by WSIPC joining the Washington K-20 Network in 2000. This linked colleges, universities, K-12 school districts and libraries statewide, resulting in more bandwidth and connectivity with schools. According to the K-20 Biennial Report of December 2006, joining the network “enabled WSIPC and the ESDs to serve local districts more effectively” because without it, each school district would have been left to find a locally-delivered system.
Initially, WSIPC had developed their own Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application in-house, called WISE, which not only provided a complete SIS, but also information management for both finance and student data. Starting in 2001 WSIPC collaborated with Skyward and, as a result, completely restructured the computing infrastructure at WSIPC, replacing the legacy application offerings with one integrated ERP application provided to WSIPC customers. WSIPC called its ERP application WESPaC (WSIPC Enhanced Skyward Point and Click) which included Skyward's software suite of student, human resources and financial management modules. WESPaC also included Citrix's MetaFrame which provided users with remote access. Skyward eventually converted its thick client student application into a web interface and part of its finance software to have a web front end. The other part of their finance software is still thick client. Therefore, WESPaC has now evolved into two applications, one being a web-based student application and the other being a finance application that is partly web-based and partly thick client. Both of these applications are currently provided by Skyward.
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Wikipedia