Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

We used to use Blackbaud for tuition management, student information system, learning management, and enrollment. Now we just use them for historical tuition management data. There were some good benefits for using Blackbaud for all these services in a school however there was some difficulties using it with a larger Montessori school with mixed grade classrooms.

• Blackbaud started out affordable (20k) but went to 28k after 3 years
• Could not scale schools, wanted 15k for each additional school
• Time on tuition management went down due to Blackbaud handling parent calls

Veracross and Schoology Learning

Blackbaud serves as our Learning Management Software. It allows us to have a place to record student grades, assignments, attendance, and learning profiles that is easily accessible across our organization.

• Having grades in a singular location.
• Having class rosters that are shareable.
• Having team rosters that are easily shareable.

• It's allowed us to have been communication with our parents.
• It's allowed for better communication with the students.
• It's allowed for better communication amongst our teaching staff.

Google Drive, Google Sheets

Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is used campus-wide as our primary solution for managing student information, learning management, admission/enrollment, public website, and athletics/extra-curricular, advancement, conduct, and accounting. Teachers post and students access class materials, assignments, assessments, grades, and schedules; teachers record class attendance, communicate with students and parents, view student progress and permissions/clearances for extracurricular activities; parents view student info, progress/report cards, and submit online forms. Grades and attendance data fuel program to determine and support at-risk students and eligibility for extra-curricular activities. Data also drives review of gender-based performance differences and classroom space utilization. Off-campus tutors access course information to keep in sync with on-campus classes. Resources are posted such as information sheets, how-to videos, school and area resource links, calendars, etc. Athletic teams, games and practice schedules, and results are managed. A school store sells logo'd products. Event registration and online giving is utilized. Parents, students, and employees access the authenticated area of the site while all the public-at-large access the front-face website. Tight integration with G-Suite augments Blackbaud and enhances collaboration.

• All teachers use the grade book and report card grading functions. This is a big positive for teacher time as well as for administration.
• Online course materials, assignments, and assessments have help reduced paper usage.

Canvas, Google Classroom, FileMaker Pro

I use EMS daily in Admission for intake of inquiries and applications to our school, running lists and data, and management of the current student population.

• Communication between Academic, Core, Enrollment Mgmt and BBTM.

• I can't think of any other than users being frustrated with running lists and not having accuracy. But lists are only as accurate as the data you put into them.

Blackbaud Tuition Management and Blackbaud Education Management Solutions

We use Blackbaud Education Management during the Admissions process from prospective family engagement, capturing recommendation forms, scheduling interviews/assessments, committee review, and contract posting. We also use different parts of Blackbaud's education management with Academics, Faculty, Extracurricular, Raisers Edge, etc. The teachers are able to use Academics to track assignments, tests and attendance. RE is used for our donor database and to track all donations.

• Time saving was huge for us with the use of the online recommendation forms instead of us having to view and upload them physically.
• The fact that all of our applicants documents are cloud based and that nothing needs to be transported or have the chance of being 'lost' is very important for our department.