Blackbaud Education Management Solutions is a unified student management system for K–12 private schools. Blackbaud Enrollment Management System™: Gives schools and families the ability to track admissions progress from first impressions all the way through the application process to acceptance, enrollment, and tuition payment. Blackbaud Learning Management System™: Track students' academic performance and progression…
N/A
Schoolmint Hero
Score 9.7 out of 10
N/A
Hero is student behavior management software for K-12 schools and districts, from Schoolmint. Hero's goal is to enable consistent redirection of negative behavior, reinforcement of positive behavior and communication between educators, students, parents, and administrators across classrooms school and district-wide. Features include positive behavior tracking tools, referral and tardy management, school event management, behavior analytics data, etc.
A good, and constantly improving solution for private schools. I don't know that a lot of its functionality would be well suited to public schools, but maybe? The integration with other Blackbaud software is a huge plus for us, as we have several of their other products including their flagship Raiser's Edge. Smaller schools may not need the sophistication of Blackbaud solutions, and it is not an inexpensive option.
Hero is a great time saver for any busy school administrator. Students are able to use technology to earn positive points and also track and manage their own discipline. It is user-friendly and adaptable to the specific needs of the school. I love writing my own tracking codes and setting the action thresholds.
Not being able to customize displays, for example, Grading tab - we just finished 1st semester and teachers could only see the current quarter but not the 1st one which is still part of the first semester. Lack of customization in assessments.
Scheduling- even though re-running generating schedules, we're still getting a high number of unscheduled students. Lack of being able to limit the number of scheduled classes in a row for teachers.
Hero had the Hero Homeroom where teachers could collaborate and receive rewards but that was discontinued. I think that a similar reward system for those who are supposed to be inputting information would be helpful, where consistency for the required input is rewarded. For example: teachers were to be recording points for all their students every period every day - if they received points for completing their input & could then choose to spend those points on rewards that would help encourage participation to make it more successful overall.
Too hands-off in making sure that implementation is as successful as possible.
It is a solid product. We have some issues with the capabilities of the website building components and the out dated technology behind its communications software but overall Blackbaud Education Management Software services to combine numerous functions into one product.
Blackbaud EMS is very usable from my perspective. I am a power user and get lots of valuable functionality. It is, however, a complex system. Sometimes necessarily complex to accommodate flexibility for diverse customer needs. Some complexity seems unnecessary and/or hold-over functionality from earlier versions; nice to see this type being evolved away from over time. It is valuable to receive regular updates to the system along with good release notes of what changed and notices of significant changes in advance.
Decent support however the chat feature can take a great amount of time out of the workday. If for instance you are waiting for someone to respond in the chat and there is a fire drill, if you are not responding within a few minutes, you are disconnected and have to start all over again. It would be great if you could submit your problem and then whoever has the most experience, can respond. The training in the Blackbaud University is good but also time-consuming - a 3 hr training in the middle of a workday is a lot to ask. I like the 90-minute sessions. It would also be great to offer a shorter webinar to update on any changes implemented. Other than the email I subscribed to, there is no information on how these updates actually work.
Someone is always available. I like being able to call, chat, or email as needed. There are also a lot of tutorials and webinars provided. Hero does a good job of providing tools for onboarding new users and customers as well. It is easy to find whatever information you are looking for.
Blackbaud K-12 is very similar. I feel like I would be trading one set of issues for another so it's kind of a wash. We are very much hooked into the Blackbaud website with our Google SSO, SmartTuition, and Schooldoc integrations. It would be difficult for us to transition. That is the main reason I haven't really entertained other web firms.
We used a tardy tracking system a couple years ago but it wasn't as efficient as Hero. It did not keep track of any positive behaviors. I don't remember the name of the system but I know it only focused on the negative behaviors and giving out consequences for those negative behaviors.
Negative - The rollout is brutal. Blackbaud said it could happen in 6 months, but that is definitely not a reality. It will take well over a year, and one complete school cycle to actually integrate everything correctly.
Positive - The amount of time saved in data processing has allowed our office to become more involved in other areas of the school.
Positive - The ease of having everything in [one] place, from inquiry to application to contracts and course registration, has been a HUGE benefit to our applicants and their families.
Definitely worth the money. The kids are happy, they're using the program as often as they can, and they appreciate the opportunity to be rewarded for their good behavior.
We've been able to sustain a store, and that's super awesome. I know we wouldn't be able to without the help of Hero and the ways in which we keep the hype.
I think I need more help with teacher adoption. We have a lot of initiatives at our school, so we're trying to take on a little more than we can chew at this point. We're getting there though!
