schooltool-developers team mailing list archive

["Tom Hoffman" <tom.hoffman@xxxxxxxxx>]

SchoolTool 2009 Plan and Budget
===============================

Quick 2008 Recap
----------------

SchoolTool core -- We successfully released a beta for SchoolTool 1.0
on schedule in October, our primary goal for the year.  It includes
the core components of a student information system, plus calendaring.
 This has had the desired effect; we've seen a significant increase in
queries, feedback and bug reports from around the world in recent
weeks.

CanDo -- CanDo finally merged completely with the improved SchoolTool
web interface.  2007's developer internships paid off with a strong
core of student developers, led by Filip Sufitchi.  An 8000 user,
multi-school production CanDo server was successfully deployed in the
fall and is seeing significant use and generating enthusiastic
feedback from teachers and administrators.  The year was capped off by
an RFP by the state of Virginia for a $40,000, eight district CanDo
pilot.

SLA Intervention System -- Principal Chris Lehmann and the staff at
Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia worked with Alan Elkner to
create and deploy a student intervention tracking system which has
worked well for them and attracted immediate interest in a larger
pilot by district administration.

2009 Goals
----------

1. Release SchoolTool 1.0 in April as a basic, functional student
information system, and support schools and teachers independently
deploying and using it through the rest of the year, including a 1.1
release in October.

In this year we only need a relatively small group of users, perhaps a
dozen schools.  Many more might overwhelm our support capacity.
Schools and systems looking toward substantial 2010 deployments will
already be looking in 2009, so we will be building those relationships
as well.

2. Package and release CanDo so that it can easily be used outside of
its Virginia base.  Help with support as necessary to make their pilot
and likely larger statewide fall deployments a success.

3. Do fit and finish on the SLA Intervention System, package it,
support pilot deployments in Philadelphia and promote it elsewhere.

4. Raise an additional EUR 50-100,000 in outside funding.  The CanDo
RFP gives us a good foundation for further fundraising around CanDo.
Having that project based essentially in Washington at the beginning
of a new administration committed to economic stimulus, innovation and
technology in schools shouldn't hurt.  SchoolTool core is interesting
to any enterprise that is dependent on collecting data for schools;
supporting a free SIS that they can distribute to schools and receive
cleaner data would be a smart investment.  POV has expressed interest
in pursuing EU funding.  There are numerous angles to explore.

5. Raising money implies an organization to receive money, which we
currently lack.  Having a US-based entity that could accept money from
US schools and pay developers outside the country would be helpful.  I
don't think it makes sense to do this via the Shuttleworth Foundation.
 I could create a US-based SchoolTool Foundation as a non-profit.  My
initial research indicates that joining the Software Freedom
Conservancy may be the best bet, as it gives us a means to receive and
disburse money as tax-exempt donations without the administrative
overhead of starting and running a non-profit corporation.  Canonical
may have a role to play eventually as well.  Regardless, this will
require further discussion and research.

Developers
----------

We benefited from a stable development team this year.  Ignas
Mikalajūnas has really taken ownership of the code and done great work
this year.  You generally can't hire a BDFL, but Ignas and I are
forming a pretty good two-headed approximation of one.  Alan Elkner
has given us the consistent US developer presence we lacked, working
closely with our partners in Philadelphia and Virginia.  When Alan
split off periodically to work on the CanDo payroll, we picked up
Justas Sadzevicius at POV, who has quickly picked up the SchoolTool
codebase and efficiently dispatches bugs and adds features for us.

This team and their pay rate and bonus schedule will remain the same
this year.  We expect Alan to work about one quarter time on CanDo's
budget.  We aren't budgeted to support CanDo internships this year.
That amount could easily be eaten up by exchange rate swings in Alan's
salary.

Primary Developer Responsibilities
----------------------------------

Ignas > SchoolTool core releases, packaging.
Alan > Intervention System, CanDo liaison.

Other Expenses
--------------

Travel: I've reduced the allowance slightly because we won't be
sprinting at PyCon and EuroPython this year, which will save the
expense of longer hotel stays and conference fees.  We will sprint at
the Arlington Career Academy in early February and probably again
there during the summer.

Servers and Sys Admin: Brian Sutherland will continue to serve as sys
admin for the near future, but we are increasingly able to shift the
complicated bits to Launchpad.  We also stopped hosting a demo
instance of SchoolTool.  It is a better use of time to make it easy
for people to apt-get their own instance.  So overall, we will spend
less on this line.

Budget Breakdown
----------------

I slightly rearranged last year's numbers to reflect changes in salary
exchange rate.  We saved a lot of money this year on dollar
denominated payments.  Who knows what this year holds.

Project Management:	45,200
Development:	152,800
Travel:	10,000
Servers & System Admin:	2,000
	
Total:	210,000