District to form EdTech committee and draft outage-communication protocol after Canvas sync failures

Teachers raised an ongoing Canvas-to-PowerSchool grade-pass-back outage that has disrupted grading and parent communication and said they had little guidance about interim workarounds. "If you don't hear from us by May 18, please follow-up," the district administrator relayed from IT's message about credential rotation; the district asked staff to report persistent problems to support after that date.

Participants described how the disconnection between Canvas and PowerSchool forced teachers to consider manual workarounds, duplicate grade entry, or stop using one platform temporarily — actions that could create mismatched data when systems are reconnected. Multiple teachers also reported recurring printer failures and noted that different buildings have different copier vendors and contract terms, complicating immediate district-wide fixes.

In response, the group agreed to combine options: form an EdTech committee to work in conjunction with the IT tech committee, create a mechanism to activate an emergent-task force from committee membership for urgent outages, and have the district develop a standard outage-communication protocol for staff. The chair confirmed the combined decision and assigned two staff (Ken and Lindsey) to draft the white paper/strong design communicating the plan to staff.

The district administrator described how the district's proposed protocol might work: a Google Doc or similar status document would be created for major outages and updated regularly, with at least daily updates for multi-day outages and a clearly stated owner for communications. That protocol would govern when the EdTech committee and the tech committee should be convened to develop mitigation plans.

Members asked for the EdTech committee to include tech-savvy teachers who can translate IT updates into classroom responses and to prepare suggested teacher-facing mitigation steps (for example, export-grade workflows or Excel backups) during outages. The chair asked the assigned drafters to return the white paper as a straw design for the committee's next meeting.