Skyward Protest

Skyward filed an appeal Friday of the State's decision to go with Minnesota-based Infinite Campus as the State's sole School Information System provider.

In that appeal, which was also sent to NewsChannel 7, Skyward says the Department of Administration made some serious errors in scoring the proposals of the two providers.

Infinite Campus was awarded the contract because they had higher technical scores, and a lower cost, based on the State's scoring process. Skyward claims the cost to implement their system was driven up artificially, because the State considered the cost of implement their system in every School District in the State. Skyward already serves 221 Districts in Wisconsin, nearly half of the total. They claim their implementation cost would, in reality, be about $4.6 million lower than what was represented in the scoring.

Additionally, they say the cost score was based only on the first year of the contract. They say Infinite Campus's cost would be lower in the first year, but that Skyward's would be lower for the subsequent 6 to 9 years the contract would continue.

In all, they claim their bid would save tax payers $14.5 Million, and argue Skyward should have received the maximum score for the cost of the systems, a mark awarded to Infinite Campus.

The full appeal can be found linked to above.

Scott Glinski, President of Skyward says, "We found more and more evidence that really pointed to the process itself which was flawed and so that's why we went forward with the appeal process."

Throughout the process, Infinite Campus and the Department of Public Instruction have maintained the bidding process was accurate and fair.

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Click here to view Thursday's story including how Legislators are responding to the situation.