The Voucher Program would enable school districts to take advantage of Helios products and services practically free as their costs would be reimbursed to them
Helios Tech was approved by the California Department of Education as approved IT providers for school districts under the Education Technology K-12 voucher program as part of the Microsoft settlement. It is great news for all eligible school districts as they would be able to benefit from products and services offered by Helios Tech such as its flagship Helios K-12 software for K-12 management, compliance, and reporting. Districts can benefit from these products and other IT services provided by Helios Tech practically free of cost as their cost would be reimbursed to the district under the voucher program.
The voucher program resulted from a settlement between Microsoft and California Department of Education and provides full reimbursement for technology products and services to schools and districts that provide free or reduced price meals to at least 40% of their students. For more information on the program, please visit the Education Technology K-12 voucher program website.
Some of the top reasons why districts should consider Helios Tech for their IT needs are:
Helios Tech's flagship solution called Helios K-12 helps school districts manage their employees, make data-driven decisions on staffing, credentialing, and master scheduling as well as makes compliance reporting for NCLB, CBEDS, Assignment Monitoring, Williams law and other regulations very easy.
To learn how Helios K-12 can help them tremendously, districts should call 800.345.1947 or click here.
Helios K-12 HR helps school districts meet NCLB and state requirements; manage HR more effectively and enables better decision-making
January 10, 2007 By a staff correspondent
School district administrators and educators today are constantly bombarded with multitude of requirements, both mandatory and voluntary. Increased legislation in the post-2001 scenario at the federal and state levels demand a detailed paperwork and analytical reporting systems.
School districts then have their own pandora's box with demands for teacher credentialing, student performance and teacher/staff rosters, to name a few tips of the iceberg. More often than not, the school districts are found to be entangled in the web of costly litigations on the one hand and the cry for correct inputs of reports from federal and state agencies as well as their own boards of education.
A survey by Helios' founders suggested the need for a software solution that may enable making the right decisions to increase teacher effectiveness and student achievement.
Helios is an educational technology company founded by a team of professionals with experience in school district administration and technology. "Helios is created to address the real world needs of school district administrators and personnel," says Yash Sharman, lead developer of Helios and an education technologist.
Enter the world of Helios - where information leads to compliance which leads to effective instruction. Helios K-12 HR is a HR and Credential management and reporting tool designed specially for K-12 districts and schools. Helios promises to bring out a tried and tested system for HR management, reporting and helping comply with local, state and federal regulations.
In an easy-to-use, web-based interface that means anytime, anywhere access, Helios organizes a lot of information in a manageable way. There are at least 100 of such reports that are covered by Helios. The system developed by Helios offers strong security, customizable drop downs and reports backed with support on technical, HR and compliance issues.
Some of its key features are:
No Child Left Behind and Helios
Stronger accountability for results - With features like evaluations, ability to track teachers’ qualifications, and reporting capabilities, Helios takes away the burden of accountability from you
More choices for parents - Using built-in NCLB letters for parents, one can communicate with parents regarding teachers’ highly qualified status
Evaluation - Helios provides an electronic way to manage teacher evaluations
Reward success - Reward teacher success in raising achievement (teacher incentive plans)
Highly qualified teachers - Improve quality of teachers by identifying teachers needing professional development and support programs and bringing highly qualified teachers to the classroom
Williams Legislation and Helios
Access to highly qualified teachers - With Helios, one can monitor teachers' credentials and EL authorizations - a key component of Williams legislation - and accordingly assign teachers with EL authorizations to classrooms with 20% or more English learners.
Effective classroom assignments - Monitor whether teachers have proper classroom assignments and credentials
Overall, increasing number of school district administrators and HR analysts are evaluating Helios and have recommended that Helios is the only solution they have seen so far that offers a comprehensive suite of tools to manage the whole gamut of district management and reporting from the perpective of staff and administration as opposed to student information systems.
"Helios is very useful to us in creating reports that the County and State need and you know that saves us a lot of time and effort. In fact, we cut down the time from a week to just a couple of hours," said a credential technician in one of LA's largest school districts.
Helios is also looking forward to expand its offerings of tools for education with management and achievement planning solutions in the pipeline. One thing is sure: District administrators and staff are going to breathe easy from now.
