The Carbon Career & Technical Institute will soon join the rest of the county school districts in updating its student information system to PowerSchool.

"There's no downside to the transition," Nate Rinda, Director of Technology told the Joint Operating Committee at their meeting Thursday. "It's all benefit."PowerSchool is a Pearson software product that supports 8.5 million students in 50 states and more than 50 countries, making it the most widely used system of its kind in the world.More importantly it is used by the school districts in Carbon County and any system integration would make cooperation all the more easy.Students and parents will be able to log in and check grades and attendance, among many other features.Currently, CCTI uses a program from Intermediate Unit #21 that not only lacks many of the features and ease of PowerSchool, but costs much more.Rinda expects savings of thousands per year. "What we have now, they have different classifications, so they're tacking on for every thing. They charge $3.60 per student for attendance, $5.92 per student for grading."Even at a rate of $1,275 per student, with all the training involved, data conversion and final implementation, PowerShare is expected to cost $400 less than they're existing contract.The committee was very excited about this new system, and they expect to vote on it next month or two, when an official contract can be presented, so they can install and begin training on the new software before the start of the next school year.