PowerSchool Unified Classroom Special Programs (Special Education) covers all areas of education including 504 processes, services capture for Medicaid billing, special education case management, gifted and talented, English language learners, and Response to Intervention (RTI). It is a comprehensive system that combines case management with tracking clinical services to ensure the delivery of IEPs and alignment of IEPs to state and local goals. The system is designed to support districts in…
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UKG Ready
Score 8.0 out of 10
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The UKG Ready® software suite is a centralized HCM solution designed for small to mid-sized businesses. It automates and streamlines HR, payroll, benefits, time, talent, and scheduling processes. UKG Ready's suite of tools offer actionable insights while helping to ensure compliance. Using AI, it draws on work, people, and culture data to boost efficiency and productivity. For example, UKG Ready streamlines core HR functions by centralizing…
PowerSchool Special Education is well suited in one specific area: special education in elementary, middle and high schools. It works here due to the nature of the platform, which focuses on meeting the needs of students with all disabilities. The software offers information on specific cases, students, as well as Academics. This supports the mission of supporting all students and making it easier for educators, parents, and administration to be more heavily involved in tracking, monitoring and supporting students. When using PowerSchool Special Education, it simplifies the IEP process. Collaboration is one of the best abilities the software provides. There is a need to track program eligibility, including 501 accommodations and Title 1, and in a school with such a large population, the functionality that this software offers to users is important.
I might recommend UKG to a larger organization than ours. The complexity is rich, but perhaps it is too powerful a tool for what we need. That or it's a bit messy in its construction, having so many tools available but difficult to find or not working appropriately. UKG Ready processes payroll efficiently and with ease, but unless you are using a simple accounting platform it may not be able to easily integrate with yours
It provides all the documents necessary for supporting federal and state laws in regards to the special education program.
Extremely effective in helping to meet reporting standards for students. Teachers that fall behind on deadlines or timelines are given reminders and provided with processes to monitor progress and reporting.
Case management is easy, which leads to 100% compliance. This is important because the best strength is that this platform helps to increase funding by meeting all requirements of the Fed and State.
An additional strength is the collaborative potential it offers. The platform offers student portals to let staff access all resources on demand.
In terms of improvement, the interface is extremely ugly and simple in design, color and icon design. The platform needs to have a much more interactive and appealing interface so that use is more comfortable.
For parents, their side of the platform has a lot of options. That needs to be simplified. I think less and more drop downs within the key menus would help.
The disability codes are very lengthy. Perhaps there are easier or faster ways to access subsections to select.
We plan to renew our support and use of UKG Ready each year unless it becomes unavailable or the district seeks another vendor. As of now, there are no plans to changes vendors. The district staff is now familiar with using UKG. Another vendor will need to meet the same expectations we have come to enjoy with using UKG
UKG is the platform with the best overall usability on both an admin and user side. Employees find it easy to update personal information, the dashboards are clear and easy to follow, and the navigation of it is also easy to follow. Overall my favorite platform to use and learn more about.
The system seems very stable. Being hosted in the cloud, we are vulnerable to internet speeds and busy times. The system has been down a couple times over the 3 months we have been live, but Kronos resolved the issues very quickly. To have access from a desktop, tablet, time clock, or phone app is one of the best features....users have almost NO REASON they can't clock in.
We were always told that Kronos was the best, but there are reports that we got out of ADP and other payroll providers that we cannot get out of Kronos. One example is a report of Productive/Non-productive hours by department. We also need the dollar amount associated with the hours. This is information that is required on our cost report and we were told that that report is unavailable. It is very frustrating when I can't get what I need.
If I was only rating support itself that would be a 10. Every support case I have entered has been addressed efficiently and with the desired result. On the implementation and transition to support there were multiple issues that those doing the implementation or transition could not answer or workflows and various settings left undone only to be discovered later. We implemented 3 different modules and the expertise we got for each one varied widely.
Our in-person training was a hybrid. Live online training with an instructor. They were very knowledgeable of the product & the area they were training on. I asked several specific questions and if they didn't know the answer immediately they followed up after class.
Pretty good online training, you have many how to options and can watch them several times. It can be hard at times to dig through the amount of data online but can usually find what you are looking for. Also you can download documentation for setting up the profiles and policies.
Make sure the people who are doing the build have extensive knowledge on employment law and asking the right questions. I would bet that the people who helped with our builds did not read any of our employment contracts or ordinances; and when I asked questions about how other companies handled certain basic dictates from federal employment laws, they didn't have any idea what FMLA, FLSA, etc were.
There is no other software on the market that is specifically focused on improving the support of special education programs. PowerSchool Special Education system has a similar interface and structure that Moodle Rooms offer; however, Moodle Rooms is for content management and student management. PowerSchool Special Education is not related to course curriculum management, it is primarily focused on special education programs. Managing special education programs can be very difficult and stressful. It is impossible to successfully comply and healthily support a special education program without tools such as PowerSchool Special Education. Even more important than what other software does do for schools and educators, this platform makes it more convenient for families. Electronic forms and parent portals make processes easier.
We currently use Paycom and are extremely dissatisfied with the lack of functionality and poor customer service. Rippling and ADP were other vendors we evaluated who performed well and offer a lot of functionality but we decided UKG was the best fit for our needs now and to scale with our strategic growth plans.
There is also a positive impact on ROI for the school. Utilizing this software provides the school with the ability to increase the potential it receives in Title 1 funding. Title 1 funding is a major source of funding for inner-city schools in particular.
Normally, the IEP and tracking process is lengthy, filled with paper, and often takes more time than necessary. Utilizing this software speeds up the process and provides clear requirements to be met, which reduces the number of questions and confusing meetings or papers left in teacher mailboxes.
I have not experienced a negative return on investment with the software, because, without it, the paper trail would be too lengthy and the process would be much more convoluted, with long meetings, long sheets of paperwork, and missed deadlines due to a lack of clear collaboration.
This is basic, but we finally know how many employees we have! It sounds ridiculous, but prior to UKG Ready we were on a payroll system that's reports were only as accurate as the last payroll cycle, so they were always 2 weeks behind and static. UKG Ready allows for realtime, daily reporting of information.
We are able to get salary data for our various locations to be able to compare them to each other, as well as across our "competitors" and external competition.
The data provided allows us to be able to understand the trends at individual locations including attrition, advancement, raise information, and other data points that we haven't historically done comparisons on
We can see the demographic and geographical information for our employees and the benefits that they elect
