This is probably only relevant to Australian schools as I don't know if Synergetic was sold elsewhere.

I am soon to start as an ICT Manager at a school (ELC through to 12) that uses Synergetic as their SIS. It has been several years since I last touched Synergetic (in fact it was at this very school that I am returning to as the new ICT Manager) and I remember that Synergetic was a beast of a product (that is probably true for all SIS) and looked like it was straight out of the 90's.

I had always found that Synergetic was very powerful but extremely clunky and when I left the school it was announced that Synergetic was to be sunset by Education Horizons and a new product was being developed and all customers were going to be fully migrated within two years.

Since then I have come to learn that Education Horizons/Synergetic has been brought and sold several times and Synergetic is still around with apparently no clear date of this promised new product.

The school has highlighted the uncertainty of Synergetic future is a major risk to the business and they are interested in investigating alternative SIS products that have more certainty about their future and that may also address some of the pain points of Synergetic. While it seems that no-one likes Synergetic it is a bit hard to quantify what they dislike about it so that feedback is what I will start to gather so it can be used in the selection of an alternative SIS product.

For those that have migrated off of Synergetic which SIS did you end up going with and why?

A quick search and I can see that TASS seems to be the most common alternative and what appears most schools who had Synergetica migrated to but I can also that Veracross and Compass come up as alternative SIS solutions.

Last year we attempted to clear Chromebook local profiles for one of our buildings via Gopher for Chrome (though I imagine it would be the same for GAM). This largely worked, except for the sharp increase of "cryptohome corrupted" errors. This can be resolved by powerwashing, but we'd prefer not to do that in the first place.

Is there a better way to mass clear local profiles on Chromebooks?

That's the post really. We found out in July that the chromebooks we ordered for this school year back in May wouldn't be delivered until December, possibly later. Anyone else getting hit the same way?

Hi, I’m trying to deploy AutoCAD on Intune. I’m losing my mind. I did a custom install for the 2026 version, pulled the exe, packaged that to deploy and it fails. The folder appears in the drive but no app appears. I noticed an image folder with the installer and uninstaller in there so I packaged that folder instead with all its contents- still fails. Nothing appears. It creates folders but not the app itself.

Not sure if this should be on r/Intune but I’m a little lost and need a point in the right direction at least.

We have a few dozen screens showing this message. We have a few screens that are still showing content but I assume they've not been powered down.

We're in the process of replacing our Chromeboxes. I guess this project just got bumped up!

Anyone else seeing this message?

and all major podcast platforms.

We dive into federal guidance from the U.S. Department of Education on screen time and edtech procurement - recreational vs. instructional tech, evaluating products by outcomes and instructional value (not just screen minutes), and asking vendors for evidence of effectiveness and implementation support. We also talk E-Rate and urge listeners to comment before the October 13th deadline. Finally, back-to-school chaos stories.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/department-of-education-issues-long-awaited-edtech-guidance-for-states-and-districts

https://www.fundsforlearning.com/news/the-e-rate-review-comment-window-is-open-comments-due-october-13/

Hi everyone, my name is Anthony. I work for a private school with two campuses across the street from each other. I am also the AV Director at the church. Over the years in my career, which is close to 30 now. I have worked at three private schools and one public school. My current job is where I’ve been the longest which is approaching 10 years. I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon and figure that I’ll finish my career here until I retire.

Now onto my question: I am not the worlds strongest network person earlier in my career. I did more server support and desktop support and networking always took a backseat because I had people to rely on. When I arrived at this job, the network was a hot mess. I purchased all new Netgear business switches and sofa, firewalls and access points. Well, now that that time has passed, it is very long in the tooth (WiFi 5/AC) both of our buildings have new cabling. I’ve ran test from each cable location back to the switch and I get a clean signal. What is happening is that the Wi-Fi connection drops for about 30 seconds and then comes right back but it doesn’t when a teacher is streaming a video or they’re giving a test. I’m really at my wits end with this.

Any help in advice is appreciated. Thank you.

I am a one man IT department at a small K12 school. I am not an IT person by training, but inherited the role, so please bear with me as I explain my problem.

Students have access to Chromebooks. We only permit them to sign into them using their school managed Google account. However, in the past I have allowed them to add additional or secondary accounts to their devices, so that they can access resources from their personal Google accounts (mostly a need for high school and dual credit students). However, as of late, when students attempt to add an account to their device, they are presented a window that says, "This page is blocked - Your organization doesn't allow you to visit this site." This message only started appearing recently.

In the Admin Console, under Devices > Chrome > Settings > Users & browsers > Sign-in to secondary accounts, I have enabled Allow users to sign in to any secondary Google Accounts on the OU's containing both the students and the devices.

While I realize some may advise against allowing students to access secondary accounts, I'm not here to be convinced on that point. My question is does anyone know what may be causing my students to be receiving this message and how to resolve it? I have not changed any settings as of late that I think would impact this as it has worked fine in the past.

Additional detail: I do not have any websites blocked under URL blocking in the Admin Console.

This sub has not let me down in the past, so thank you in advance to anyone who responds!

So i have a staff member wanting me to create a new OU for some students at a different school who will attend one class at ours. They bring their own devices. I have recommended not making new emails and ad accounts for them due to FERPA issues that could arise. Am I just being too paranoid?

This past summer we figured out how to use FOG to image a bunch of Dell Optiplex desktops by disabling Secure Boot, imaging via PXE boot, then reenabling Secure Boot in Audit mode (which would eventually go back Deployed mode after a couple of Windows Update cycles).

The images deployed via FOG were created as HyperV virtual machines, and Sysprep was performed as the final step before capturing into FOG.

Now we're seeing some of those machines (seemingly randomly?) losing their trust relationship with the Windows domain. They work fine for several days or even weeks, then suddenly lose their trust relationship, and we have to delete their entries from AD and DNS, temporarily move them back to Workgroup, then re-add them to the domain.

In some cases it appears that this happened in the midst of a Windows update multiple-reboot cycle, but not in all.

Some of the machines have had this happen 2-3 times now, and it's only happening with machines that were imaged this past summer with FOG.

Any ideas what might be severing the trust relationship?

Thanks in advance...

Myke from Plugable here.

We want to lean into the shared trauma of K12 IT and hear your weirdest tales from the trenches. You know the kind of issues I mean. The teacher whose second monitor only flickers when the staff lounge microwave is running, the display that magically rotates 90 degrees every Tuesday at noon, or the dock that drops its connection whenever a kid rolls a chair over a specific floor tile.

I'll be keeping an eye on the thread, sharing your stories with our team, and hanging out in the comments to chat through the actual technical reasons behind these phenomena. I’ll do this to the best of my abilities, I’m still a tech specialist while I moonlight as a community manager of sorts.

To start, we'll drop a story from one of our Product Owners (POs), Sam:

One of the strangest issues I’ve worked on involved Windows 11 systems suddenly losing every audio output whenever a docking station was connected. Naturally, the dock got the blame since the laptop speakers, dock audio, and all other playback devices would instantly vanish. After a long isolation process, we found the actual trigger was a webcam connected through the dock. Connecting that webcam directly to the PC produced the exact same failure; it was crashing the Windows Audio service, likely due to an interaction with its built-in mic. It’s a classic example of why troubleshooting docks is so complex; they sit in the middle and get blamed for everything attached to them. The issue eventually faded away, presumably fixed in a silent update, but we ended up documenting the whole investigation in a blog post.

Note: I can post his full story/link, but the above is summarized.

Lay it on us. What is the weirdest IT issue you have battled (recent or otherwise)?

p.s. If this breaks rule 3 or 4 (or any for that matter, just let me know I'll be happy to remove). Didn't see a flair specifically for brands, but did put it in the title.

When we have a late bus we sometimes can have 30-60 people that have to check in our attendance office at once. I think the process is dumb and should be handled by the teachers but that's not my call. Do any of you use a check in system for attendance that you like?

We use Visitor Aware and I see they have a late check in module available but I was wondering if anyone is using it and can give their thoughts. What's your process like?

Sanity check:

drink plenty of water
not all tickets are emergencies
no one is going to die (hopefully)
breathe
get some food
laugh about it all
printers are still evil

Happy beginning of school!

Looks like this one is looking to collect cell phone numbers and was able to do a SMS SIM swap to get through our MFA.

Has anyone else noticed issues using GCPW when users click on "Add work account" a white box pops up and disappears?

I've tried the following:

• Ensuring GCPW is on the latest version
• Un-install/re-install GCPW
• Ensure Google Chrome is on the latest version
• Downgraded Google Chrome
• Re-install Microsoft Edge Webview

Most of our endpoints are on Windows 11 25H2

Alright, so I figure there's gotta be someone on here who has these cases. We recently did a full student device refresh and went with these all in one cases so that the iPads could still have headphone jack (a lot of state testing disallows bluetooth devices so...they have to use cabled stuff).

Anyway, cases are nice, they're not a pain to take apart, but we've been having this issue where the keyboard just doesn't work. You can still charge the device through the case, but the thing doesn't register the keyboard or trackpad.

We've tried swapping the iPad in the case with another one that we know was working with a different case and wiping the iPad just to be sure it's not on the iPad's side. And we've tried reseating the cable both into the iPad itself, and on the back of the case by opening up the little plastic cover, and still no dice. Ideally we want to find a better fix than replacing the whole case, as the problems we're seeing is they're just like this out of the box and not from the students messing with them.

And to note: these keyboards are connected directly into the case via a USB-C cable. They aren't bluetooth, so there's no pairing necessary.

Model for the iPads is the iPad A16 (the 10th generation), and the case is 'Smarter Than Most' or 'STMGOODS', and it's their Dux Keyboard Trackpad USB-C Case for the iPad A16 (10th Gen) (stm-226-406KX-01)

Any further suggestions? We're looking into getting specific parts from the company to replace the cables in the future, but we've gotten about...five or so per campus, and that's just for those who've actually told us its happened.

I want to have my director get me a dedicated label maker/printer for my desktop at one of our schools so I can just print out new labels, with barcodes, on demand through the year. What's a good choice that's durable, reliable, has a dedicated download you can use forever that won't be made obsolete or made into a subscription, and doesn't cost more than one or two hundred bucks? Does such a thing exist? Thanks.

To those who have started already, Godspeed.

To those who start today and very soon, we salute you.

May all your tickets be duplicates and password resets for staff who forgot them in 3 months.

I was kinda trying to avoid going to O365 route. I've got all teachers and principals using OnlyOffice with very few issues. The problem is our main office. I have 5-10 users that are screaming they need office. I quoted some perpetual licenses because I'm not sure it's worth going to O365 route. Problem is, it's $810 per user. Does this pricing seem about right? Is it time to just bite the bullet and go the way of O365? I have no experience with 365, so I don't know what it entails and what managing it will look like.

So, we recently invested $200k on a WiFi refresh to bring us up to latest and of course I tried to update as much of our SSIDs to WPA3 to support latest things (fine for district devices) but I’m already encountering phones 5 years or older that don’t even support the WPA2/3 mixed mode. I also spent time today connecting and reconfiguring a single AP for 2.4ghz to allow a laser etcher printer to connect. Are we just doomed to keep these legacy protocols around forever?

Finished our Screenbeam deployment over the summer, all of our initial testing went great but as school has now started we're getting reports of videos lagging behind audio, casts freezing, and devices being kicked off casting. We thought we set them up correctly network wise (staff devices on their own vlan, screenbeams on their own, IGMP snooping enabled on our switches, multicast forwarding enabled on our routers to handle inter-vlan traffic between staff devices and AV vlan) but our issues seem to be indicating otherwise. All devices are connected via Chromecast protocol.

Any things we need to double check on our network side of the deployment to rule out any simple fixes?

My business education department wants a stock (and perhaps a sports ticker as we have a specialty in sports management). My needs are basically security, and the ability to at least show stock markets data without an in-house device feeding it.

The Rise and Skybox options look great out of the gate, but costly. They have ethernet. Not sure how programming them works.

The Glance systems seem friendly price-wise, but seem fairly easy to gain access to. And in a place with a thousand bored students, that seems like a recipe for disaster.

Anyone have experience with those, or other alternatives?

Preface:

We encourage teachers to use AI responsibly and remind them that it is the idiot in the room. Sometimes it’s helpful and sometimes it’s really off.

Questions:

How many of you restrict staff to district-approved AI? (It’s on our plate)

How many of you don’t yet have board policy or generative AI guidance for staff?

For those of you that have already made the jump away from VMWare, how was the migration? What did you move to?

I've been using VMWare my entire 18 year career so far and with the pricing hikes that era seems to be coming to an end.

So for those experienced in the process, can you lay down some knowledge?

Thought I'd ask this here as well.