NORTH CAROLI NA'S LARGEST SCHOOL DISTRICTS

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Gaston County Schools New Hanover County Schools Cumberland County Schools Guilford County Schools Union County Schools
Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools

Durham Public Schools Johnston County Schools Wake County Schools

Feb. 21, 2014

Mr. Donald C. Kilburn President Pearson North America Pearson Education 501 Boylston Street, Suite 900 Boston, MA 02116 Dear Mr. Kilburn, We are writing, as large district superintendents in North Carolina, to share our frustrations and concerns with the implementation of PowerSchool and ask for your help. Collectively, our 10 school districts are responsible for educating almost half of the students in our state. We have had an extremely difficult year because of the challenges presented by an aggressive implementation timeline for PowerSchool. In fall 2012, North Carolina superintendents made an impassioned plea to the Department of Public Instruction and Pearson to allow for a longer implementation timeline, raising concerns that no state had converted to PowerSchool in less than two years, and that, inevitably, there would be unexpected setbacks. Not only was this request ignored, the Pearson representative was rude and arrogant, claiming that superintendents across the state would be apologizing as the implementation would go exceptionally well. Not only has the implementation had debilitating setbacks, but the negative impact on superintendents who voiced concerns have been immeasurable and, interestingly, that Pearson representative is no longer with the company. Converting the entire data system for North Carolina, including all aspects of student information, grades, assessment data, transcripts, athletic eligibility, discipline, exceptional children modules and grade entry by teachers has simply not been feasible within the mandated timeline. Converting all these elements has cost us millions of dollars and an undue amount of staff time and stress. Delays in report cards, transcripts and attendance data have generated considerable negative attention from media, resulting in districts being blamed for the poor implementation. The rollout was further complicated by inaccurate and ever evolving technical specifications (e.g. PowerSchool's ability to support Internet Explorer 8). Even a cursory due diligence exploration would have revealed to Pearson that the majority of the LEAs in the State use Internet Explorer as their standard browser. Public goodwill has been severely damaged. We need Pearson to accept responsibility for the challenges as we continue to address issues.

Send any correspondence to

P.O. Box 880 Greensboro, NC 27402

Phone (336) 3708100

North Carolina's largest School Districts February 21, 2014 Page 2

Specifically, due to the accelerated implementation timeline for PowerSchool, we have experienced: extensive initial costs for training staff on PowerSchool products continued expenses to train and maintain support staff with PowerScheduler delays in issuing report cards, transcripts and grade point average calculations delays in college admissions applications due to transcript problems inability to generate the Principals Monthly Report, thus delaying attendance verification and funding reconciliations even into February, an inability to determine accurate attendance details for districts and the state using the PMR; this data drives decisions for support of school initiatives delays due to poor support from Pearson for browsers other than Firefox frequent maintenance weekends without access to HomeBase products performance issues related to PowerSchool servers causing midday outages frustrating changes in procedures in mid-year so that process/reports run correctly an inability to input and extract discipline data a lack of opportunity to really pilot SchoolNet because of slow or non-functioning components, as well as extremely slow processing time

We, as districts, have struggled because we had to add training staff, fund training and provide assistance to our schools, while addressing transcripts one by one, line by line, and communicating delays to parents, elected leaders and the media. We have all tried to be positive about the new software. The product is a good one and certainly worthy of implementation; however, due to the accelerated timeline, the modules were not ready for a fully integrated roll out. This has caused frustrations among the end users, our school teams, who must cope with seemingly endless changes in directions, and cumbersome processes. We were promised a year to use the product before making a decision whether or not to purchase. We have not had a year to use the product. It's February, six months into the school year, and we still do not have month one attendance data reconciled. We are writing to request that Pearson publicly acknowledge the challenges and provide PowerSchool to North Carolina districts for the 2014-15 school year at no charge, as a good faith investment in our long-term partnership. We want a productive relationship with Pearson since the data system will be with us for many years. We see Pearson's extension of use for the 201415 school year as a needed concession in light of the challenges we have experienced with PowerSchool conversion. Thank you for considering this request.

Send any correspondence to

P.O. Box 880 Greensboro, NC 27402

Phone (336) 370-8100

North Carolina's Largest School Districts February 21,2014 Page 3

Sincerely,

Dr. Heath E. Morrison Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools

Dr. Frank Till, Jr. Cumberland County Schools

Mr. Hugh Osteen Durham Public Schools

Mr. Jeff Booker Gaston County Schools

Maurice 0. Green Guilford County Schools

Dr. Ed Croom Johnston County Schools

Dr. Tim Markley New Hanover County Schools

Dr. Mary B. Ellis Union County Schools

Dr. Beverly Emory Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools

Send any correspondence to

P.O. Box 880 Greensboro, NC 27402

Phone (336) 370-8100