Budget Planning for Schools: Where to Allocate Your Funding

Schools and School Districts have to make a tough decision each year when selecting their school software. Depending on the size of your IT estate, school budget, and planning requirements, your choice may differ. Scalability of functionality and affordability of the software itself are important considerations.

Senso is here to help you make the most informed decision on how to use your school budgets for a more cost-efficient software system.

Have you taken advantage of all of the government funded programs and grant money for schools to improve their IT systems and purchase safety software? For more information visit our recent blog on E-Rate Funding and for a more general guide on who is eligible for what funding programs read our Guide to Federal Funding.

Essentials for your School IT System

Before you use your funding on software, schools should clearly understand the essentials that software can provide, and which elements can be combined together to create a fully comprehensive system to provide all the support that they require.

Safety as a Necessity

No matter the needs of your school or district, safety should underpin the software package you choose. Content filtering, monitoring, and other safety features are essential to any comprehensive school software system.

The safety features of the software should be schools’ first concern when choosing their software package, ensuring that the other software features for network and classroom management appreciate and follow important rules and laws around privacy, while also bringing the same standards of functionality to protect the safety of staff and students.

Remote Functionality

A big part of saving costs is about saving time. Especially in larger schools and ISDs, minimizing the need for technicians to be physically present with the device or at the deployment area is key to cost efficiency. With regular reporting and alerts directly to the dashboard, staff can prioritize issues and solve them with pre-configured remote scripts, or take control of devices to solve more complex problems.

Network management software with remote functionality and multi-device connection is simple and efficient for any size IT team. Software, updates, and device management are deployed from anywhere with a few simple clicks from the central network management dashboard. This streamlined process benefits both the IT Team and the efficiency of the school’s tech as a whole.

Easy Access and Use

School software should be effective and easy to use for everyone. The simplified dashboard and shortcut features allow even those with limited tech skills to use the software in multiple ways. With just a few clicks, anyone can complete complex tasks to set up monitoring, configure updates, and manage a number of devices.

This is especially important for safeguarding software, where each staff member should have an awareness and understanding of how to use the safety features to identify problematic and harmful behavior online and have access to tools to prevent it with proactive classroom control software, and to pass on concerns where necessary.

Our Software Bundles

Having worked with many schools and Independent School Districts over the years, Senso knows that each school budget planning allocation is different. Therefore, we provide our customers with a more tailored approach to their software.

To help each school get exactly what they need while meeting their budgets, we provide our software in 3 bundles: Silver, Gold, and Platinum.

Silver Bundle ($3 per device per year)

Our basic software bundle is a more affordable option that nonetheless provides the essentials for any school to run a safe, functional IT network. The Silver bundle includes:

• Content Filtering
• Class Instructor
• Senso Blur
• Emergency Alerts
• Service Desk

Gold Bundle ($6 per device per year)

By upgrading to the Gold bundle, schools can ensure extra safety protection and classroom management capabilities for their students and teachers. The Gold bundle features:

• Content Filtering
• Senso Blur
• Safeguard Cloud
• Class Cloud
• Emergency Alerts
• Service Desk

Platinum Bundle ($10 per device per year)

Our premium Platinum bundle provides comprehensive software for any school or school district. Achieve the full potential of Senso software with the full suite of features in our Platinum bundle, including:

• Content Filtering
• Senso Blur
• Safeguard Cloud
• Class Cloud
• Emergency Alerts
• Service Desk
• Human Review

Effective Budget Planning for Schools with Senso Software

If you are interested in any of our software bundles, contact our team to discuss your options, or get your Free Demo to see if Senso software is right for your school.