Mesquite Independent School District Uses Progress® OpenEdge® Pro2™ to Streamline Data Reporting for 3,000 Teachers, Campus Staff and Administrators

Encompassing 52 different schools in the Northeast region of Texas, the Mesquite Independent School District (ISD) is dedicated to educating close to 40,000 students across several grades. As such, the Mesquite ISD requires top-of-the-line software and hardware to keep things running smoothly for students but also for those working on the backend, including system administrators, developers and IT professionals.

Lane King, Director of Information Systems at Mesquite ISD, has said the district “has always been on the cutting edge of technology” and has been a part of three significant database solution changes. Its last one, Crystal, was used to manage its extensive database and systems, until 2014 when the solution eventually went to its end-of-life cycle.

King and other system administrators began researching solutions to help store and manage system data that also provide robust reporting capabilities. Since the district’s systems encompass several unique data sets, users require a tool to help obtain it quickly. Additionally, King spoke about the data reporting requirements set by the state. 

“Our goal ultimately is to find the best software provider that would provide everything that the district needed regarding student data,” says King. “And in Texas, one of our big things is the state reporting requirements, which are extensive. We looked for a solution with a proven history of accurately providing the state reporting requirements we needed."

Since the system administrators at Mesquite ISD had previously worked with SQL databases, King wanted to find a solution to match the skillsets of the team. King and his team began discussing solutions with Skyward, a school database management software company, and discovered Progress® OpenEdge® Pro2. 

After Skyward deployed OpenEdge, King and his team created a link server, which connected to various information ports — ranging from on-campus related data, such as staff information, to more business focused ones, like financial systems. They received an improved insight into what happens within these parts of the system.

Mesquite ISD was also able to better serve students, teachers, guardians and administrators. Information from the database needed to be used by those groups and a 3rd party vendor while respecting the private nature of the data. Mesquite ISD's system administrators created "views" to allow information deemed pertinent for users without compromising social security numbers and other private information. This became an extra layer of security around student information.