Kick off!

Tauntaun guarding the library at Lewis Elementary.

Welcome to the Portland Public Schools (PPS) blog for the rollout of Google Apps for Education. We will use this blog to communicate project progress and updates. I want to kick the blog off by providing background on the project and an update on the state of Google Apps in the District.

On April 15, 2010 the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) entered into a contract with Google for statewide use of the Google Apps for Education platform. This groundbreaking agreement included the necessary language to provide Oregon students with sufficient legal protections from digital prying (in particular, strong FERPA language). The ODE agreement allows districts to enter into an Inter-Governmental Agreement (IGA) with ODE and piggy back on their contract with Google. PPS took advantage of this opportunity and entered into an IGA with ODE on July 23, 2013.

As many of you know schools within PPS have been leaders in the Google Apps space. I was put in charge of the Google Apps rollout and over the winter we formed a project team within IT. We solicited school interest in participation via an Admin Connect article. Twenty schools replied and interest has continued to grow. We identified six schools to partner with for a soft launch during the Spring. Five of the six schools already have Google domains and will be migrating to the District domain. These schools have provided critical input for the project by sharing their experiences, use of the platform, and potential issues with a District wide rollout.

Today marked a major milestone for the project with the first accounts created on the District domain, apps4pps.net.  Our six partner schools will begin setting up their portion of the District domain next week. We have technical work to complete before all staff, and students, have accounts created. This work will continue through the summer and culminate with all staff accounts being created in August and student accounts following registration.

We are also forming a Google Apps for Education Steering Committee comprised of stakeholders from schools and central office. This group will oversee the project, school prioritization for implementation, and distribution of Hapara licenses. District wide adoption will be an exciting journey and I look forward to working with all of you!

Brett Luelling
Director of System Development & Integration
Information Technology