Staff warns outsourced enrollment customizations can add hundreds of thousands in first-year costs

Enrollment staff warned the board that using third-party vendors for enrollment customization can produce large first-year costs. Staff cited a prior example in which a vendor contract for system customization was discussed at $318,000 to enable zone-reading functionality.

"The 1st year we'll need stronger. We had our $318,000 contract of cost for Enroll Indeed to update their system to be able to read zones effectively," a Staff member said, illustrating how outsourced customizations can produce significant one-time charges. The staff explained that the district's internal technical team can sometimes perform similar customizations at lower marginal cost and that vendor changes often incur additional API and setup expenses.

Staff stressed that reliance on a third party also creates risks around customer-service consistency and language supports and that those are reasons the district is considering keeping registration inside its own PowerSchool setup when possible.