This episode delves into the intricacies of data management within independent schools (with a focus on OneRoster) and explores solutions to support tech leaders. The speakers emphasize the critical role of data integration in achieving efficiency and improved outcomes. They also highlight the benefits of OneRoster in streamlining data sharing across various systems. Additionally, the conversation underscores the importance of prioritizing data security and privacy to safeguard sensitive student information.

• OneRoster - a standard for securely and reliably exchanging roster information, course materials, and grades between systems, developed and maintained by 1EdTech
• Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) - another standard developed by 1EdTech, used to connect learning tools with an institution's learning environment without logging into each tool
• 1EdTech - nonprofit committed to building an open, trusted, and innovative digital learning ecosystem
• Blackbaud
• K-12 Schools Software
• Calvert Hall College High School Realizes Efficiencies with OneRoster and LTI Integrations - Customer Story
• Veracross
• Veracross 360 - school management platform
• API Plus for Academics - enables integration between the Veracross platform and a broad range of educational software providers using the industry data standard known as "OneRoster"
• Taping a cat to a wall

Phil, welcome to Talking Technology with ATLIS,

the show that plugs you into the important topics and trends for

technology leaders all through a unique Independent School lens.

We'll hear stories from technology directors and other

special guests from the Independent School community,

and provide you with focused learning and deep dive topics.

And now please welcome your host. Kristina Lewellen,

Hello everyone, and welcome back to

talking technology with Atlas. I'm Kristina Lewellen, the

executive director of the Association of Technology

Leaders in Independent Schools.

And I am Bill Stites, the Director of

Technology at Montclair Kimberly Academy in Montclair, New

Jersey. And

I'm Hiram Cuevas, Director of Information Systems

and Academic Technology at St Christopher school in Richmond,

Virginia.

Hello, gentlemen. How are you today?

Little chilly this morning. It

is. I walked outside and I thought the same.

I was like, wow, it's getting cold.

I have a chihuahua mix that we adopted a

while back, and that dog does not vibe with the cold weather.

So I was dropping into the Atlas team slack. We have a channel

set up for kids and pets. And today the Chihuahua took center

stage because she was bundled in the blankets. She was not having

it with this weather. Yeah, Bill's

dog has no issue with this weather.

No, I have 140 pound long haired limb burger.

She prefers to be outside. I often laugh, because when

everyone's like during the winters, make sure you don't

leave your dogs outside too long. You need to think of your

animals. My dogs like I'm laying out here it's cold, and when

there's snow, she's submarine under that thing. We can't get

her in, let alone worry about her getting too cold.

Yeah, this is exactly the deal with a

staffer, an atlas staffer, Kelsea Watson, has a husky, and

that dog will sit out in the backyard and just look in at her

parents as James and Kelsea are trying to call her in, she's

like, Yeah, no, I'll come in when I decide.

You know, we have a black lab, who's about 92

pounds. And right now, anytime there's water and cold, that's

one happy pup. Oh

my gosh, this is cool. We've never talked

about animals before. That was fun. I love this. Well, I'm

bringing you guys together today on a technical topic, and we

deep dive into things. Every once in a while, we did one a

while back on APIs, and not long ago, Hiram and Bill, you guys

were talking about data and data sharing across platforms, and

why that ends up being kind of a headache for technology leaders

at our schools. What I find really interesting is that you

each at your schools represent a different major sis player in

our market, Hiram, you're a Blackbaud school. Bill, you're a

Veracross school. And those are the two loves of our lives here

in the Independent School world. And what's really cool is that

we're going to have a conversation with a

representative from each of those companies today on the

pod. So this is kind of exciting, but before we welcome

them in as guests, I wanted to at least just stop for a second

and have you guys explain sort of where this came from. You

both came to me with this idea you wanted to have a

conversation around one roster and data woes as you're

wrestling them. So tell our audience why you wanted to have

this conversation. I think the

interesting thing is, there's so many wonderful

resources that are being created right now that I look at some of

the textbooks and some of the ancillary materials that are in

textbooks, and then you sit there like, okay, so they've got

quizzes built in, they've got lab activities built in, they've

got problem sets built in, but how do I get this information

from my sis to that platform and then Bill and I would be like,

Well, how do You get that information, then back into your

grade books? So this was a conundrum for us, because we

were creating these micro silos of information that our teachers

desperately needed to have within the SIS so that they

could leverage all of the functionalities of their

SIS programs. So like,

the tool is super cool. But then the tech

leader has to come in and say, Yeah, but how are we going to

get it back in the SAS, right? So you guys are like,

I mean, I remember, it was a few conferences ago, a

bunch of us sitting in a room together and saying, you know,

we really need to start pressuring our vendors to be

able to have data go back and forth a lot easier than what

it's currently doing. Everyone offers something, and we'll get

into what those options are, you know, keep it at a high level

before we get a little deeper. But every company's got, like,

an option for getting data out and data in, but it's all ad

hoc, and having something where you've got a standard that you

can point to so you're not having to pivot and change and

develop for every single vendor that you work on was really

something that has risen to the top, as far as like a need or a

must have, even for schools like ours, and that's where our

guests can come in and speak to a lot of that work right now.

Yeah. And Kristina. What's also

interesting is when your data map matures for your

institution, and now you start looking at the connections to

some of your ed tech materials, and you notice that the

directions are unidirectional versus bi directional. That

really gets the attention of senior leadership, because all

of a sudden they're starting to recognize, okay, we have

problems here. We're developing silos. We have asynchronous

information that could potentially result and if you

were to look at Bill's data map, his is color coded, and any

lines that show that they're black, that means that they're

man, they're manual transfers of data. You want to eliminate as

many manual transfers of data as possible. Well,

that sounds like a really good setup to

welcome our guests for this technical, deep dive that we're

going into today. First, I want to welcome Steven Boyle, who is

the Senior Product Manager at Blackbaud. We are also welcoming

to the pod Thad white and Thad is the Director of Product

Management at Veracross. Gentlemen, thank you so much for

joining us today for this conversation, before we get into

the topic at hand, I'm hoping that you could just take a quick

minute and introduce yourselves to our community. Steven, why

don't we go to you? You're with Blackbaud. How long have you

been there? And tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah,

lovely to be here. I've been at Blackbaud for

28 years now. Kind of a unicorn for the technology company. I'm

a product manager, and kind of unicorn there too. I started out

as a software developer, and so my journey through, through my

career as software developer to UX designer to researcher and

now product manager, and I'm a product manager of our APIs and

integrations and one rush jerseys in that portfolio. So my

technical background helps a lot in being able to bridge the

divide. Heard the guys talking about their data map and

problems and how they go to the vendors. That's how these kind

of topics present, right? They present in a we've got this

problem, and we need you to solve it, and it becomes

incumbent on us to jump in. But I really like diving into these

tech details. I

love it sounds like you're the perfect

guest for us. And Thad tell us a little bit about your background

and how long you've been with Veracross. Absolutely.

Hello, everyone. Excited to be here. I am the

Director of Product Management at Veracross for academics and

admissions. I've been with Veracross Coming up on seven

years now, and in that time various roles in product but

started as an account manager, and prior to that, implemented

Veracross at Culver Academy. So shout out to all my Culver

Academy's family. I haven't seen you all in a long time, but

excited to just continue to provide value here. But yeah,

excellent topic. Really excited to get out in the weeds

with it. Awesome. So before I let the

guys take over with their detailed tech questions, I'm the

non techie person on this pod, so I would love to ask you guys

to explain to me what it is we're talking about in terms of,

okay? So we said one roster, and that is kind of the standard

that has been designed and developed by one ed tech, a

company that basically says we need to kind of standardize how

data flows, right? So I'm hoping that you can explain that, or if

I've gotten that wrong, help me and help our audience

understand, especially those who maybe are listening in as

leadership, or folks who are not deep into the IT side, but maybe

more on the Ed Tech side. Why does this matter? What is it and

why even have this conversation

the way it presents to us, the way the

problem comes to us is, I've got this silo, I've got this manual

process. I want to use this tool, but I can't put another

task on my teachers. I can't give them another log in. I

can't have this data just be abandoned somewhere. And so when

we hear that type of problem, the answer is an integration of

some kind, especially that and I both are an si s, a student

information system where schools want the source of truth to

reside, so they want that information to flow back and

forth, one roster enters the picture to solve, originally, a

specific problem of connecting that learning management

situation to all the tools that These teachers want to use,

providing a way to present rosters and students and

teachers information such that there isn't manual entry,

there's no data error because of double entry, and then getting

that data back. Once again, you don't want double entry, and you

don't want the teacher to have that extra task of doing some

additional step you want to remove the friction, you want to

prevent the data errors, and that's where one roster comes

in. They built a standard. It's not a product. They built a

standard, sort of a rule set that everybody agrees to abide

by, so that when we talk to each other, we know what information

we're getting and we know what information we have to give. It

in order to solve the problem. So,

Steven, before we started this call, you

kind of made the analogy that it's almost like a USB, a USB

cord, or whatever. They all fit in the same box. So we have to

agree somewhere what a USB looks like. Yeah,

all the different companies agreed to put this

plug on our machines and all the device can we agree to support

the data that comes through the plug and all the different power

rules, so they don't have to talk to each other. All they

have to do is read the standard and know that if I present my

system such that it adopts a standard that everybody can work

with me, that's the gold standard. That's what they're

trying to achieve, the Holy Grail, I guess. And it has its

benefits. There definitely are places where we can talk about

the gaps. Is every standard USB wouldn't have evolved if it was

perfect the first time. Same thing is true for one roster. So

then

Thad, let me ask you this, whether you're

with Veracross or Blackbaud or another system, was this a

welcome standard for folks like you that are offering sis

systems in terms of a solution to this problem?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, echoing what

Steven's already said, the core problem we're presented with is

our schools, globally, all over the place, have individual

ecosystems of software that they use. Right? There's no one tool

to rule them all. And so everybody's got these various

vendors, hundreds of them, and the SIS goal is to provide them

support and to enable them to use that ecosystem, official,

right? And so things like one roster, these standards where we

can say, okay, the bar for what it takes for us to be able to

integrate with XYZ vendor is now substantially lower because we

know we're speaking the same language. We've established it

is one roster. There's no drastic and huge process to

understand well, we call it this, and we structure the data

this way. What do you do? Like that interpretation that has to

happen when you're building a partnership and a true like

direct integration, significantly less effort on

both sides when we have an established standard to align

with. So we can say we speak one roster. Do you great? Okay, so

we can get to usability, or at least testability, very, very

rapidly. So that's hugely impactful for us. And so as we

identify more and more key vendors and they align with the

standard, it just the market itself comes up as far as

interoperability and how easy that is for both schools and the

vendors themselves, our management is significantly

lower, because instead of managing eight direct

integrations, custom integrations, with vendors, now

we're managing a platform, a language for managing Those one

will get you many with regard to the effort put into that so

hugely impactful for us, things like one roster.

Whenever you talk to a vendor about how you can

manage data, they will talk about, really, what I'll say is

three things. They'll talk about, oh yeah. We can give you

a CSV, you know, a basic spreadsheet, comma separated

sheet with these things. Or they'll talk about, oh, yeah,

that'll work. We have an SFTP server, secure file transfer

server. Or they'll talk about their API, and like, oh, we have

an open API. And you'll get into all sorts of conversations about

APIs. We have another podcast on that. But those are what a

vendor, a product might sell you on. Is this open ability to get

at your data. Why is one roster better than what's come

before it? I think that the idea of a

standard and it being agreed upon by everyone, what it

eliminates on both sides, the SIS and the school and the

solution, it eliminates the requirement that the school go

to their vendor and convince them to have a proprietary

direct integration for each of the tools they use. And then it

takes the burden, a lot of the burden, let me not say the whole

burden, but it takes a lot of the burden off of the CIS to

provide one integration that all the tools can use, instead of

having to do a production cycle for every tool they want to

support, so it's faster to market. It's easier to convince

a partner when the lift is smaller. That's really what it's

doing. It's allowing the SAS vendor to solve problems for

numerous tools all at once. It's allowing the school to have an

easier conversation with their vendor to provide that access to

the tools they want to use to solve their school specific

ecosystem of problems. So that's what I think the real what did

it replace kind of answer is, is it replaced that burden of

convincing all of your business partners to spend all of this

time building something specific when they can build something

that everybody can start

on Absolutely, I'll echo what you just said there. I

think what we've seen on the ver cross side is it creates

opportunities that otherwise would have been difficult to

maneuver. So in the case of some large partners, let's say

massive companies, perhaps working with. US is not on their

top priority list. And so a lot of them, it would seem, have

aligned with standards to say, we just work with the standard

you align with that we can cover everybody, and we're not having

to talk to each and every vendor, because they've got

1000s of us reaching out, right? And so plugging into that has

opened up conversations and opportunities to be able to

integrate with other vendors in a way that is collaborative, in

a true partnership, rather than and Bill, you've seen this on

the Veracross side historically, perhaps building custom

integrations from the si s side that the other vendor may not

even be aware exists, right? And so yes, we integrate with this

vendor. Different from Yeah, we speak the same language as this

vendor. We have a way to talk about and build bi directional

support for you the school from both sides. So those things, I

think one roster is really helpful with regard to just that

partnership with vendors who otherwise might not have time or

resources to devote to each and every one of us as Ed Tech

vendors.

So sad you mentioned the term language. And

what's interesting is what we've been trying to avoid, I think,

with one roster, is developing these dialects for each of these

software companies more than anything else. And so it's bad

enough that we've got to understand New Jersey speak,

right bill, stop, stop.

So how would this avoid the issues with, say, a

hub or a middleware solution that some schools are deploying?

Yeah,

that's a good question. Obviously, the more

links in the chain, the more complicated it is to find the

issue right. And so anytime we're talking about a middleware

solution. The answer, I'm thinking about the support

perspective, right? Something goes wrong. You reach out to

support on either vendor side, and they go, Well, it's this

guy's problem. No, it's this person's problem. And so you get

kind of that man in the middle syndrome for a lot of these

especially when we're talking about middleware, not to say

that middleware doesn't have a value. There are certainly value

to that. We've listed some of them out in what we've talked

about. But I think with regard to this, things like to get into

the nitty gritty, the source ID concept, which, in one roster,

is a sort of a UU ID concept that says we're referring to

these objects. Here is the identifier. I don't care what

Veracross ID for this thing is. I don't care what Canvas ID for

this thing is everybody talking about with us, about these

objects is using this string. We're in agreement, that's how

we're referring to it. So a number of these technical

aspects built into the standard really facilitate faster. What

thing are you actually talking about? Vendor B versus

Veracross. Vendor a right and allows us to present tooling to

the schools to sort of self service, a lot of that, being

able to go in and go, Oh, I see there's a problem with this

person's class. What's the corresponding class in my LMS

vendor, using some of those aspects built into the standard

really allows the school to play a larger role in understanding

what's happening and why? Whereas in a middleware, you're

really getting obfuscation about well, it was sent over here and

then they manipulated and sent over here, you get lost in that

process. And so for me, I think one roster is the shared

language middleware, if you will, really enables the school

side personnel to have a better understanding of what's going on

and exchange of information between the

systems. One of the things I would add to that is,

in terms of the links in the chain, I think are a great

thing. And I'll be even more blunt about it, you know,

middleware comes at a cost, and it's an additional cost that the

school needs to take on in order to make that work. So if you're

working with vendor a and vendor B, and they're saying, we need

this piece in the middle to connect the two that are going

to bring things together. That's a cost, that's me

troubleshooting and supporting. And one of the interesting

things that I'll point out with that is a real example we had

when we were going down that route with one of these tools,

was they opened it up and they said, All right, we're going to

try to connect this. We need these data points just give us

an access to all these scopes. And I'm like, Why? Why do you

need that much information? Like you need to tell me what you

want, because you're telling me to give you all the scopes

associated with academics. And I was like, No. And when you need

to think about like, how we secure our own data and where

that goes. You know, you need to better define what it is you

need. You need to look into what the in this case, the Veracross

API, or even the Blackboard API, is saying that they're

delivering. And you need to be very explicit about what are you

going to take? Because that's opening up a can of worms when

it comes to who's got access to the data, that is just a huge

red flag for what we're dealing with as schools in the day to

day, the vetting conversations that we've had, you know, the

access to data, all of those things, and the one roster helps

that immensely. So my

question, then, for Steven and Thad, do

you guys have some. Examples, you know, Hiram mentioned the

textbook thing with grading mechanisms, and Bill is talking

about like, hey, you know, I would love to use this option,

but I don't want to release access to my data. So do you

guys have some examples of ways that independent schools are

typically taking advantage of the one roster shared language?

But are there also unique things that you've seen that are kind

of cool, that this solution is essentially unlocking for

schools? Yeah,

absolutely. I typically think of this in the

intended use, and then the other uses. One roster is really an

LMS integration tool and standard from its intended use,

meaning it produces rosters so that your external LMS can build

its classes for the teachers and add the students automatically,

so nobody's having to do Duba work there, and it returns

grades and assignment information back to your sis

automatically. And so that's the intended use. So examples are

any LMS, and I'm sure that'll agree. The way that presents to

us is our sales teams come and say, I've got a school that's on

Google Classroom, that's on Microsoft school data sync, it's

on whatever LMS we want to sell into that school, but we have to

meet them where they are, so we need a system that will allow us

to go into that school, and they will be successful from day one,

because we integrate and once again, teachers don't have

multiple logins all that. So that's the intended use. There

are plenty of fun, odd anecdotal stories of somebody using one

roster because it's just data. And one of the most recent ones

that I had, it was a small communication tool that really

just wanted the names and emails and SMS phone number, right,

like one Roxbury produced that they like, we can do this. We're

going to be an emergency service for the school. It was aimed at

super small schools, so they didn't need full API

functionality of you know, both of our systems have dedicated

contact lists and things like that. That one roster is an LMS

tool, so it's limited in some of the data. So these alternate,

these non standard uses will go to it because of the standard

it's data. They don't have to go and convince Blackbaud or

anybody to write some dedicated thing for them. They don't have

to figure out our proprietary API. So those are the fun

stories. Is that off brand use? I

would agree, yeah. And the most interesting ones

that we've seen, so obviously, the BI directionality of one

roster is what we typically focus on, right, database of

record for demographic information and rostering and

all of that, and database of record for grades and they

share, right? Most of the interesting things that were

somewhat unexpected is, to what degree and how many, how much

interest there was, you know, just stopping at rostering,

right? Like we have a lot of folks who ship rostering in that

format, same thing Steven is talking about, just for the

purpose of it's lightweight. They understand it is

consistent. Rostering a demographic information. They're

much easier to pull, perhaps, than developing individualized

solutions for all that. So I was surprised by that. Over the last

few years we've been doing this, just how many of them just say,

yep, roster, and we just need that, and we don't have anything

to do with an LMS, but we'll gladly pull that from you in the

standard so I think that's encouraging that above and

beyond, like we're always focusing on LMS style scenarios,

but there's plenty of other folks who have nothing to do

with LMS activities who are glad to adopt the standard and use it

just for rostering, which is exciting, and I think

that's a key point in terms of one roster is geared

a lot towards managing the LMS features, those things that

touch the classroom features, because the One thing I don't

want to come out is sounding like a caveman, you know, like

ABI bad. You know, it's not that all these other tools, all these

other things I was leading with, you know, in terms of what are

the problems that we're trying to solve with this, those

things, they need to be there. They have a distinct place to

it. But it's interesting when working with my colleague, Alek

Duba, when we talk about things that Veracross can and can't do,

it's kind of like you've got to be like Neo in the Matrix. You

see the way in which the system is designed to work, but then

you figure out how you can bend it to make it work, and make it

work to suit your needs. And I think it's those unexpected ways

in which, particularly as you said, that smaller companies,

companies that don't have the resources to build out in this

way. And Steven, I think you made this point as well. It

gives everyone that one thing to build towards, and say, Okay, I

don't need to worry about trying to read the Blackbaud API or the

Veracross API or the vendor X API. I can just look at this one

thing and draw out of it what I need and maybe supplement with

other things, but you can definitely do it in that way. I

think it's awesome. Peter

our producer, Peter Frank, I think

we're going to need to order some T shirts that say API bad

and put Bill's face. We have a new meme.

I. Think we do. Sorry. Hiram, go ahead,

yeah,

I think what's really interesting there is to

Bill's point and everybody's discussing so far, the rostering

is a key component, but it also allows these vendors who excel

at creating these ancillary resources to excel at that and

focus on that, so that you get some great teaching and learning

going on in those spaces. And really you end up with the major

sis and systems being, you know, the hubs and the cores of that

data for those ancillary systems,

yep, and that is the great thing about it,

because more than just LMS is even slightly adjacent tools.

We've already mentioned, some of them, like learning materials,

like you've got a textbook management system that you want

to associate with a textbook with a class, so you need to

load the classes in and the rosters for the classes, but

you're not passing grades back. You don't have to do the rest of

that connection. So that company can rely on the data and the

fact that you've got user data and roster data and can build up

for what they need. And then I've worked with a lot of

partners, and it's interesting to see the evolution of the

partner itself. Think of it in terms of a startup. A startup

can do a very lightweight use of data, and it applies across a

lot of vendors. And so they can start there, and that'll get

them to that 50% point of what they want. And then they can go

back and say, Okay, I've got this data, and I can have this

functionality that I've got across the board. Now let me go

supplement it with their proprietary API functionality

that's not available through one roster. But then I can go to

that vendors clients and say, Hey, you're with Blackbaud,

you're with their across we can also do this. So then that

partner has a stepping stool to each phase of their development.

I've loved walking these partners grow into that. It's

interesting, and it takes a while to see it happen, but it

is cool to watch. So one of the

things that I think is an area where even with like

the APIs that may be out there, just using straight APIs, not

using one roster that come up is, I think there's certain

limitations, or there's certain things that I'd be curious to

hear your thoughts on around issues related to DEI efforts,

because I think one of the things that we've struggled with

with certain APIs that we've used in the past is that, for

instance, when we have name changes for whatever reason, and

we say that in the school, and I'm going to use a Veracross

example, because that's what I know. But if we're using

Preferred Name, and we want preferred name use, so we'll put

in a preferred name. So I'll use myself. My first name is

William. My preferred name is Bill. What I want showing up

everywhere is bill. But if your API is pulling my first name,

they're pulling William. And when I see William, I said, this

person or this school doesn't know who I am. They don't see me

for who I am, because my name is Bill, right? William is the name

that I was given, but Bill is who I am. So how do you think

about the solve around those and I'll pick on Thad for a second

here, not to exclude picking on Steven, because I love picking

on everyone equally. And Thad knows this very, very well about

me. But like I opened up our back end, and I went to the API

the section here, and I'm looking at what is the given

name, which is, again, that normalized field header for

first name, and what Veracross is supplying his first name, but

if we do that, William's not going to be bill where we need

him to be bill. And if the systems in our gender, we've got

male, female, non binary. Well, what if the lists are different?

How do you solve for those types of problems?

Absolutely, it's challenging, right? And I think

not only software vendors, but schools, we're all wrestling

with the same thing, right? And ultimately, in my mind, it boils

down to, I've been having a lot of conversation around this in

the background, right? How do you convey and maintain agency

over personal identity as a person? Bill. You have the right

to expect that people refer to you by Bill, and that extends to

the expectations applied to the software vendors you work with,

just like you're saying. I mean, think historically, we've

applied some generic, systematic rules behind the scenes to go,

Okay, we have a field for preferred name, use that here,

there, and otherwise, how do we facilitate you saying, my

preferred name is Bill, and I want it to be used in these

contexts, right? That's a broader question that we're

wrestling with, but above and beyond that, every standard is

constantly building in the same way that we all are. And so it's

certainly a challenge that all companies, everybody I've talked

to who, especially in technology, is all working

through. How do we structure this better? Is it the addition

of additional fields related to identity. Where we expand on

these things is our notion of name, for instance, being x

number of fields that represent your name? Are there

alternatives? Are there differentiation between legal

name and preferred name versus any number of other things,

right? And so I think the challenge. Right? And I don't

have an answer for you, Bill, just to be clear, I think the

challenge we're all up against is, as we develop and as

culturally globally, we discern what the appropriate mechanism

and ways of approaching identity broadly and agency within that

identity, especially in software develop. How do we all keep in

sync so that we're developing, again, sort of a standard on

expectations around how we model those things in software, and

then how do standards like one roster keep track with that? And

I think it's just open and honest communication discussions

amongst people facilitated by places like one ed tech that are

talking about, hey, we're all facing the same kind of

challenge. How are we approaching it as a community of

software vendors, right? What are our expectations? How are we

thinking about the future of this and developing this to the

benefit of our schools and the people in our schools, right?

Because ultimately, it's a person centric thing that we

want to get right, and I think everybody wants to get it right.

You know, it's just immensely challenging, and in a good way,

completely agree with that. It's well put that

this is more than the standard. It's a community discussion, and

the pressures on one roster come from different areas. I

sometimes describe one roster as a five corner carpet for a four

corner rim. It covers a lot. It's not perfect. So there are

gaps, and you have to deal with the gaps. The devil's in the

details right in terms of the implementation, etc. And this

dei conversation, you can almost look at my backlog and see the

conversation happen in the work items that we had to deliver and

the blackboard, it presents as a school coming and saying, I'm an

independent school and I promote my school as connected to its

community, understanding its students. And if my teacher

says, William, are you here when they're taking attendance, that

is saying you don't know who I am to that student and that

family is just one degree farther separated from my

school, or even we talk about parents. Yes, parents same

thing,

maybe a Mr. And Mr. A miss and a miss kind

of thing. And so there needs to be some flexibility in what our

families look like. Yeah, the

first step in this conversation, in my one

roster work that we did was we need to present preferred name,

because this is where the teacher is talking to the kid.

This isn't legal name scenario. LMS is the intended use. So I

said, Oh, okay, I'll change the data that goes out through one

roster and made a preferred name. Boom. I immediately got

kickback, because some of the uses need first name, their uses

where they're dealing with monetary accounts that need to

be the legal name, because it's eventually going to their

general ledger, etc. So then we had to go back and it becomes,

when you implement one roster, the SIS has leeway on how much

flexibility and how many choices are available to the data

definition that goes out. So we had to add, we had to switch

back first. We delivered first name, then we changed it to

preferred name, and then we had to add the option, because it's

different for each school. Now there's that option, and we even

had, if you talk about LMS being the Inte, we had a school, a

conservative group of schools. It was a Catholic Diocese that

wanted had their position in the debate, and it meant that the

software had to reflect their position and their stance to

their community. And that community expected that, and

they were accepting of that, and it is a community discussion,

but software needs to be there for the school, and the school

has to be there for their community, for their students.

You know, those pressures come from both directions. And like I

said, there's only one given name field. We even did the same

thing for last name. Imagine the scenario where you have a

divorced family. The kid's legal name is William Johnson, but

he's so mad at his dad right now. He's adopted his mom's

maiden name is his last name, and he goes by Bill, so he's you

want both of those things. And so once again, the pressure

comes from the school. I want to meet my kids where they are. I

need to present myself as connected to my community. So

one of

the follow ups to that, and you both kind of

alluded to this, you know, one roster is what we're working

towards. To what level do each of you, either individually or

as a company have a voice in the facilitation of the development

of this standard, because is this being simply prescriptive,

or is there an open dialog about how to solve this problems

amongst others that may arise?

Yeah. Do they listen to you? I understand

that there's a council of advisors for one

roster. I have no idea how they decide on that, or what the

meeting sound like. I've not talked to anyone. I'm not even

sure who to talk to. Maybe that has a better connection there.

I'll echo that.

We, to date, have not played a big role in

participating in those conversations. To Steve's point,

there is a guiding directive board. Board, but we're not

participant in that at the moment, if

you did have a seat at the table, is there

something at the top of y'all list that you would ask them to

consider? Ooh, great

question. It is a good question. I think it's

gonna come down to pet peeves to some degree, and mine would be

assignment categories. Assignment Categories to date

have been this one big list, and a lot of the solutions that work

with us define the assignment categories on a per class basis.

Once again, it's the five cornered rug and the four

cornered room. There's slight differences between the way that

the LMS operates in the way that we operate, and that transition

is fraught with peril. I

think if I'm being selfish, the thing that would

help me the most is probably the coverage of term and final

grades. So right now, we consume assignments and assignment

grades as part of the standard. Most common thing that I see the

standard does not cover weighting definitions. So the

way that assignments are weighted, in terms of how term

and final grades get calculated, can differ between systems, and

we're somewhat blind to that. So the school is then in the

position to go, well, is the weighting the same for this

class as it is in Veracross and the LMS? There's a lot of

confusion that arises from that, just as a lack of definition,

and the outcome of that is ultimately the worst thing,

because you get to the end of the term and the teacher goes,

it says it's an 80 9b in the LMS, but in Veracross, it's an

87 Why the heck is that calculation different? And then

the work to track that down and go, Well, this assignment, to

your point, Steven, about the status is this assignment was

this status of Veracross, which gets exempted from inclusion in

the overall calculation, right? There's this, which assignment

grades are we factoring into that great calculation, and how

we recently discovered one that was the definition of drop

lowest grade actually differed between how we were thinking

about it in an LMS vendor, right? And so when I talk to

schools about this, what I usually hear is, we love the way

our LMS does it. We wish we could just pass those grades as

they are calculated there in Veracross and publish report

cards consistently. I'm hearing that over and over again, so if

they were capable of handling that exchange, and we don't have

to worry about the calculation in both systems. That would do

me

a lot of favors. I look at that as well. I

consistently, in fact, you talk about the calculation in the si

s not reflecting it's almost like we need the metadata, like

you set up calculations this way, if we could pass back and

forth, that kind of thing that helps the problem. Another one,

and this also helps the problem. But one, it feels like a cheat,

but it's still a reality, is that teachers, they see that 89

they know that kid is improved or something, and they're not

changing the calculation. They're not changing any of the

grades. They just make it an A to be reported, so that fudge

factor that is inherent in the teachers understanding of their

class and their students isn't represented by what one roster

is able to deliver, so it has to be handled elsewhere. It means

that there's an additional step for teachers. Once again, the

idea is to reduce friction. One roster does a great job of

getting us to a certain point in that journey, but there's always

that last mile. Yeah, right, the cable companies that last mile

was the most expensive. Sometimes. That's

a great analogy. Does that resonate with

you guys? Bill and Hiram, do those examples make sense to

you? Would you have anything on your wish list based on your

experiences with one roster?

To me, it's always these nuanced little differences

that come up that are the things that similar to the DEI

question. These are the little things that are just part and

parcel of school. You know, you mentioned that little fudge

factor, like, Man, this kid's really worked hard. I'm gonna

give them the benefit of the bump and help them out there.

And it's those things you know, you can solve for 98 99% of the

problems. But if it's that 1% and that 1% takes away that

individual ownership of acknowledging the student, that

1% may weigh a lot heavier in terms of what you're able to do.

So it's not the overall percentage weight that you put

on that type of a problem, but what that problem means to the

work that's going to go in to rectify it or normalize it on

the back end.

And Kristina,

I would say, you know, when we refer to that USB

analogy early on in our conversation, that is so much

simpler by comparison to this human factor that we're dealing

with when we're talking about one roster and the nuances and

the fact that it's supposed to be a standard, but we all know

that independent schools are special, and they all want to be

treated as such, and that their way is unique, and that's how

they reach their communities. That is the challenge of trying

to apply to. These standards across independent schools in

general.

One of the things that I want to ask, too is we're

talking about the one rostered standard around this LMS type

data. And one of the questions I have, and it's from a little bit

of a broader experience here, how many standards are you

working towards? Because it may be as difficult as trying to

develop your own API and develop those connections. And is one

roster a US based standard, or is it an international standard

that is applied and used? And you know, that raises in my

response was, you know, we're both working with an Australian

school, and what applies there, like I've learned, what the list

standard is, which is something we don't use here in the States.

How many standards are there? And is having things like this

solving problems or just adding to the laundry list of things

that you need to develop around?

It's both, because

it solves the problem. It gets you to a point,

but when you get to that point, you start living there, you

start realizing the shortcomings, and then even one

roster has a version. I think most of the industry is still

integrated with 1.1 but they have a 1.2 and they've iterated

and adopted, and think that we've referred to international

business and Australian schools and international schools in

general, and lower schools, for instance, typically deal with

skills and mastery as opposed to grades, and that's nowhere in

one roster, but the 1.2 version is trying to bring it in. When

you talk about how many standards are you trying to

write to? Not only are there multiple standards that we all

try to adopt. But the standards themselves have their own

multiple sets of rules, right, like 1.1 versus 1.2 and having

to adopt the next best thing. And the challenge there, just

like with the USB argument, when they made USB C, all the

manufacturers then have to agree, and the next machine has

to come out with it, and then the wire producers like

everybody has to agree when to start using it, to make it

worthwhile for people to start implementing it, and that's

another argument in it, you know. So I'm not even sure where

that one lands. I think we're in the middle of that one. I agree

many, many, right? The thing that's top of mind for me and

not to bridge into a very large conversation we likely don't

have time for. But in addition to standards that aim to solve

problems, we're seeing a burgeoning set of realities

related to standards that are governmentally related. So

whether that's standards that are adopted by individual states

in the United States, or governmental standards

externally, where the expectations and the reality of

failing to satisfy that standard have much more severe

consequences to both the school and the vendor than the sort of

opt in. Okay, we want the opportunity to speak the same

language as everybody. So I think for us, Bill, a lot of

thought about particularly, and you're right, in Australia,

we're seeing a lot of this. There's a lot of background

conversation going on. But in the US, we're seeing an influx

of state specific governmental standards, stuff like Ed five,

variations on Ed five. So there are questions as we look ahead,

especially as schools are thinking about changing

realities. Any proposed changes to Department of Ed at a

governmental level in the United States. What does that mean?

Does that invoke each state going this way and having

different standards? Do we then have 50 US standards for

governmental compliance we have to align with right and so I

think many, many is the answer. There different levels of

severity on impact there, but lots of thought behind the

scenes into how standards play into the future of what we're

doing,

and those standards encroach on the

Independent School market in surprising ways. I think that

they've been insulated from the 50 state problem in a lot of

ways, and the vendors to independent schools have been

because they haven't had to do state reporting. Now, with that

broad argument of vouchers and government money going to an

independent schools taking advantage of that, the second

they start taking money that is from a government, they have to

start reporting according to what the government requires in

order for that money to be acceptable. And that's where you

have those standards, which then puts the pressure back in the

vendors court, but then it's multiplied by 50 plus

international at that point, standards can proliferate

quickly. So would one roster

compatibility or, let's say there's a tool

that a tech leader or a school is evaluating, and they want to

kind of say, we need this tool, and it's between tool A and B.

Is one roster a deciding factor is that a question that you ask,

like in the search process, rather than the whole Yeah, we

can do an API bill and Hiram. Do you guys go out and say you need

to speak one roster? Because one roster speaks to Veracross and

Blackbaud. Yeah, absolutely,

it's definitely part of the conversation. Needs

to be a prerequisite bill, and I have suffered immensely with

data silos, and we've worked really hard to get most of our

applications and services talking to each other with

intentionality. And so there's got to be a really good reason

for us to utilize a product that does not offer that API is good.

Still, in this case, we need that API, or we need the one

roster functionality, or we haven't mentioned it, but LTI as

well.

My question is always, how can I move my data

around? What are the solutions that you're offering me to do

that, and one roster for the services and the tools that

leverage that definitely give me a short answer as compared to a

long answer. And I think the short answer is, yes, we support

one roster. Okay, I know what one roster does and doesn't do.

Or it might be, yeah, we have an API for that. Okay, well, then

we've got to talk about the API. What is the API going to do, or,

Yes, we can do, I'm just going to use a Veracross, and we've

got a data package for that. You know, you can build a query and

export it out, and then somebody can grab it and pick it up and

do what they want, with which there's a good deal of

flexibility to that. So it's something nice, but again, it's

a point of break. So it's a layers of answers that I'm

looking for, and at the top of that is one roster, because it's

the thing I suffer from most, which is giving the shortest

answer. It's the shortest answer. I know what it does, and

I can kind of

move on. And Kristina,

what we're doing is we're juggling all of those

different form factors. If you think about it as IT directors,

we have applications that utilize one roster. We have some

that utilize SSO, we have some that utilize API. We have some

that have manual transfers of data. You've got that three

headed monster, and you're trying really hard to balance

all those things. It's

interesting. Let me turn it now to our SIS

vendors on the call here. Do you guys also nudge your clients

your schools towards solutions that because one roster is a

quick yes or an easier Yes? Are you helping guide them down this

path?

The answer, from our perspective, usually is, if

there's one tool that integrates using one roster and one tool

that doesn't integrate, that's like the obvious solution. And

Hiram point of all the different form factors that he's dealing

with, illustrates it is what they're looking for is a

simplicity of training, simplicity of the system itself.

They don't want teachers to have multiple logins, they don't want

data silos. They don't want that extra friction. So I think that

the schools are okay with really any solution that solves those

problems. Just one roster is an easy question to ask of a

vendor. So I think that that's one of the places where it

really shines, is that you can say, do you integrate with

Blackbaud? You integrate with Veracross, or you say, do you

integrate with one roster? Any of

those work, I think, and provided it checks the boxes

that keep their life the simplest. I think they're

willing to adopt any of the answers. But like Bill said, One

roster is the short answer, yeah, I think that's fair.

Certainly, when we get schools asking about vendors we don't

know we're not partnered with, right? One of the first

questions is, okay, what's the easiest path to delivering on

your expectations for integration between the

platforms? If one roster is the answer, we all cheer, right?

Like that's good news, but in a similar fashion, working down,

okay, you don't do one roster. Can you integrate with our API,

so on and so forth, down the ladder of preference, if you

will, I would say so far as like school has a need that they

reach out and go, Hey, is there a vendor that you all prefer to

work with? The answer there is. It depends. So obviously it's

easier on us for one roster, but the vendor in question has to

fit the needs of schools first and foremost. Like, what is the

best opportunity for you all to find success in working with a

vendor? And we're going to be open and honest about that,

regardless of the degree of pain involved with us working with

them. But yeah, certainly a one roster is a part of all of those

conversations, just as the in road to do we understand what it

will look like to get up and running with this vendor for

you, and I think that from both of our perspectives, best answer

is they work with our proprietary API, because it's

easier for them to be more tightly integrated with exactly

the data structure that we present. Next best, I think, is

one roster, because we know that they've written to the standard,

and everybody has an expectation of what's coming and what's

going and then after that is the more manual or CSV SFTP kind of

solutions. So there is a hierarchy. Obviously, we want it

to be as tightly bound as possible, but there are multiple

ways to solve that. Abi good. We need the T

shirts now,

or maybe two sided shirts, one on the front,

one on the back. All right. So before we wrap up, we started

today. Thad and Steven, we were talking about our animals. So do

you guys have pets?

Have a cat? Have to tape to the wall whenever a

meeting comes on,

taping the. Cat to the wall. Steven, Steven,

I don't think you want to admit that on air. How about you?

Thad,

my wife and I have a cat, Harley, a dog, Lena, a

little Cocker, and then we have a goat. Jolene, you have a goat?

I have a goat? Yeah, we have a Nubian goat. Nick. We have a

winner. How big is it? Rather large. I mean, she's an adult,

so she's waist or higher. She's full grown goat.

You have a large goat named Jolene, indeed.

Do you do yoga with your goat?

No, although that might be a side hustle, I'll

have to pick up when it gets warmer.

Pat. My dog is waist high. So, I mean, like,

seriously,

probably equivalent size. Yeah. Have you

gotten Jolene to sing the Taylor Swift song with you, to have the

scream scene?

No, that's a good idea, though.

You know, I think that we're gonna need a

picture of Jolene to drop in the show notes, because now I have,

we're gonna be here another hour.

I want to see the cat taped to the wall.

I'll find that picture, maybe Velcro, but you

know,

all right, we're gonna need some pictures

for the show notes. You guys, I'm so grateful to both

Veracross and Blackbaud for lending you to us for this hour.

This has been really incredible. And what's great is that we kept

it, I think, at a high enough level to be impactful, and not

getting too techie, but also kind of diving into why this

matters. And so I'm grateful that you were on the pod with us

today to help us sort it all out. And Bill and Hiram, you

guys are right. This was a great topic, and grateful that you

brought

it to us. Awesome. That's one thing we did right

for the moment. All right, guys, thanks

so much. Have a great day.

This has been talking technology with Atlas,

produced by the Association of Technology Leaders in

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