Great SIS

WCA uses Gradelink to connect parents with their child's school experience. Being able to see grades, discipline reports, and upcoming events allow families to gain insight into the school.

Pros

Gradelink is a very simple School information System (SIS). As such, the setup time is very fast. The Gradelink support team is very helpful in getting the support that is necessary.

Cons

Because the SIS is a simple, there are not many additional features. The basic features- gradebook, lesson plans, etc. are accessible. However, the more complex features are not available.

Answer to a small school's needs

I have been very satisfied with Gradelink, from usability to customer service when there is a question or concern. The staff is always polite and efficient. I would like to see some of the"extras" included in our package, simply from a budgetary perspective. We are a little school, your tuition/fees program looks excellent, I would like to see if it more effective that what we are using now. I highly recommend Gradelink and have spoken to other administrators about our success with the program.

Pros

I needed a program that would be easy to implement, easy to use, and affordable. After reviewing a number of SIS programs, Gradelink met the needs of the school. Having the program for five years I have found new staff members are able to jump in quickly, parents love the ease of communication and availability of attendance, grades, and comments concerning their children. We also use the "news" page to keep parents up to date with reminders and current events. I use the program for snow cancellation and delays, as well as blast informational emails to our community, including alumni.

Cons

There are still a couple of pieces of information that take me time to access, including a quick attendance report on an individual student or a readable transcript that is inclusive of attendance, but a part of that might be my lack of knowledge. Customer service has been excellent in helping us customize report cards, something we could not do independently. Some of the staff is still reluctant to use the planning program to its full capacity, I'm not sure if there is an overarching reason or merely a comfortability learning curve.

Frustrating!

It has been frustrating to say the least because when we have problems or questions, customer service can "only give you 30 minutes". These issues cannot be resolved in 30 minutes. Really feeling like this will be a one year deal because it is currently not worth the money invested, but we will get our one year out of it hope that the kinks and issues get resolved.

Pros

It has everything in one site. It gives parents an opportunity to check their financial status, students' grades, attendance, and behavior assessments.

Cons

It is so frustrating to get set up because the system does not let you customize much, especially in attendance. We are a small school and also have to record church and Sunday School attendance, but it doesn't do that separately nor easily. It doesn't have an option for signing students up for their lunch options for the day! Again, common sense for an All-in-one system. We've foregone the Lesson Plan feature because it displays assignments in a confusing manner. It displays an assignment on the date that it is due...not the day it is assigned. A student/parent can't check to see what assignments they had assigned that day because all of the assignments are listed later on in the week when they are due. We've tried the workaround on that and it just doesn't make sense.

Great Product...Great Value

Gradelink makes our job that much easier.

Pros

I chose Gradelink for our school because the basic system had so many components. Other SIS's I researched charged per component. Smartsend Pro makes communication easy. We added the online payment integration for incidentals. Gradelink allows for the flexibility to fit the needs of my school.

Cons

Adding on or starting up a new feature and/or personaliztion of the product can sometimes be time consuming.

Gradelink does what we need!

We've solved communication problems and group texting as well as phone calls with the program. Our overall experience has been positive. Gradelink has been very responsive to any concerns we have had.

Pros

Gradelink has been user friendly and provides us with all that we need to store our student information and communicate with our families at a reasonable price. The customer service has been great. It is easy for us to call and get help if we get confused or don't understand an aspect of the program. We do not need to set aside days to do teacher training. The program is simple enough that brief training sessions and video links are all we need to train new teachers. Ease of enrollment and re-enrollment are nice as well.

Cons

At times, I would like more features, such as digital sign in for our preschool and aftercare. They have a program for that, but it is not what we need, so we will wait patiently for the program to be perfected! :) When parents enroll, we have found that they can skip certain answers by just putting in a space or a letter, for example. We would like for that feature to some how be fixed.