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Cortines names new overseer for fixing MiSiS problems

Vanessa Romo | October 29, 2014



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MiSiSThe flurry of organizational changes within LA Unified to deal with the MiSiS crisis took yet another turn late today as Superintendent Ramon Cortines told the district’s Independent Monitor that he is creating a Program Manager position, responsible for managing and overseeing a team working to fix the student data tracking system

Cortines also said he intends to assemble a Project Stabilization team to research, develop and test solutions to bugs in the different components of the system, which has been plaguing district schools since before the start of the academic year.

To oversee the team seeking to resolve remaining problems with MiSiS, Cortines told the monitor, David Rostetter, he is appointing Gary Sabia, an official who has been assisting with the MiSiS project thus far, to a leadership role in addressing MiSiS issues.

“Mr. Sabia had successfully managed the implementation of several Information Technology projects within the District,” Cortines wrote.

Cortines also told Rostetter he is committed to hiring more project managers and allocating more funding to nearly every aspect of MiSiS.

As LA School Report reported earlier today, MiSiS Project Manager Bria Jones has essentially been fired — technically, the district terminated her contract eight months early “for the Convenience of the District.”

In his letter to Rostetter, Cortines explained that the changes are being made to address issues that Rostetter cited for how the district can fulfill a federal court order to satisfy a lawsuit. Rostetter was highly critical of the process leading up to rollout of the comprehensive software program and its development.

In the letter, Cortines agreed with his findings, writing, “[T]he current MiSiS Project composition was not structured in an optimal way to coordinate across development, training, change management, charter school implementation, and recent data correction effort for external systems.”

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