OpenSIS - K12 Parent Portal

openSIS is one of several free and open source student information system available to K-12 and higher education institutions. The solution has been in development for several years and appears to have much of the functionality that long time commercial versions have today. The solution is a web-based application and has polished looks, a great deal of required functionality, and appears to be easy to use based on the online demo website. openSIS is developed and maintained by Open Solutions for Education, Inc. (www.os4ed.com).

openSIS is written in PHP and uses MySQL to store information. The community edition is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, is free software, and can be downloaded from the Sourceforge and opensis.com websites. The application is stable, and is in active development cycle with continuing activity in the community forums. openSIS is also offered as a cloud hosted SaaS version at a low cost. Professional and Surge versions are not free but are affordable.

In January 2010, openSIS was featured in an article in District Administration magazine alongside other notable long time companies such as Pearson and Century Consultants. openSIS is also up for voting at the Bitnami website to become a supported application stack. A search on Google returns results from many independent sources where openSIS is being discussed, a good sign for a community product that demonstrates interest and usage. openSIS is listed as one of the top 55 Open Source Apps Transforming Education for administration. Another sign of maturity and popularity is for-profit companies beginning to offer paid services for support and customization beyond the parent company.

Product features

According to the company's website, the solutions features these base features:

• Student Photograph
• Demographic Information
• Contact Information
• Parent's and Guardian's Information
• Gradebook
• Reports/Report Designer
• Report Cards
• Transcripts
• Health Records
• Multiple types of Scheduling
• Built-in Messaging
• Attendance
• Parent Portal
• User Customizable Preferences
• Security
• Light Weight IEP

These are listed as additional modules available in their paid edition or cloud version that is hosted:

• Discipline
• Email Messaging
• Student Billing
• Library Management
• On-line Applicant Processing/Admissions
• State Reporting (important for US based schools and districts)
• Moodle Integration
• US State Reporting
• SugarCRM Integration