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Ask HN: How should a small high school manage data?

2 points by bnj ↗ HN
We're a small public high school. Our main student records are maintained by the department of Education in a database that's difficult to access and out of our control. At the moment we run a violent disarray of google sheets and docs trying to manage all the different types of assessment data, compliance records, notes from meetings and professional development and teachers calling home and safety issues and attendance...

And it's overwhelming; I think what we need is a database so I started teaching myself about how to build them from scratch- and my vision, what I think we need, is a staff-only subdomain where teachers can access a dashboard of information about students and input new types of information-- and I'm caught; building our own solution seems like the only viable option at the same time as seeming like a huge mistake.

How do you approach planning for a data management problem like this?

Do you know of any (inexpensive?) services that we can look at for relief / support / guidance?

3 comments

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orionblastar
My son's school just uses Renweb: http://www.renweb.com/

They have a website and Android and iOS apps for it. The mobile apps charge a membership fee, but website access is free for parents and students.

I used to write web apps, I can tell you that you no only have to build a SQL database to store your data in, you also have to build web apps that work with almost every type of web browser. You never know when a parent will use Opera for example instead of Firefox or Chrome or Safari or gasp Internet Explorer.

You will get stuck at certain points and things will break, you'd best have a development system to work on before moving changes to the production system just in case something messes up.

If you are a small high school it might be just you who is developing such a system and it really takes a team of talented people to develop such a system. Even then there are going to be problems that need solving.

When you build your own system, for example, you might not know how to plug security holes and students or hackers can break into it and modify data. Even worse they can delete the entire database.

Let me give you this website on how to prevent SQL injection: http://bobby-tables.com/

bnj
Thanks, security is a big concern and as a school we don't have access to a huge amount of technical resources. My goal is to develop a storage system which will help us maintain collections of accurate and normalized data to support our students; if I'm the gatekeeper that might be the way it plays out. Much better to create something other staff can interact with via an interface- but I'd never even attempt to support use by students and families; as you say, the surface area is just insurmountable.

We're a fairly new school, but I can't fathom how other schools must be running their infrastructure even after having numerous conversations on the topic with other schools in the district...

orionblastar
Small nursing homes are in the same boat. My wife works for one such small nursing home and they had to hire a contracting company to develop software for them to move everything from paper to electronic forms. None of the employees know how to write code and they have to have an electronic system to comply with federal laws.

I myself am disabled, but I used to work for a large law firm in developing apps and web apps for them. I wanted to develop software for small law firms, but it never went anywhere. There was never any interest in it and I assume most small law firms keep data in Excel sheets and use VBA macros to automate things. Stuff they wrote themselves. I tried to write a prototype app in Visual BASIC 6.0 in 2003 but never got any interest in it. I never modernized the app to modern technology either.

I've found that many small businesses exist that need solutions and might not be able to afford to pay to develop software for those solutions. Which is why I wanted to develop open source business apps and web apps so they at least have something they can download and customize for their use. But I never got around to it, been busy with real life stuff.