Carrie talks with Data Insight Partners proprietors Nathan Trenholm and Justin White about their contention that the Clark County School District stole their interfaces and then stopped schools from being able to work with them.
Back in October - you know, when we had nothing to do and weren’t stressing about the future of the free world - Nathan Trenholm and Justin White filed a lawsuit against the Clark County School District.
Trenholm and White are the proprietors of Data Insight Partners, which contracts with school organizational teams - SOTs - to provide data to admin, teachers, students and parents in over 35 schools.
Data Insight Partners started after the passage of AB469 - commonly known as the reorganization law - or “reorg” for short.
The reorg created autonomous school zones and was supposed to create a “marketplace” whereby schools could “buy” services that they needed from the central district. For instance, everyone needs maintenance, which the District provides. So a line item is taken out of each school’s budget for maintenance. If a school wanted to hire an extra maintenance person for special events, they could - out of their own budget.
They could also buy services from outside vendors. Venders like… Data Insight Partners.
I’ve talked with about half a dozen principals who all say things like, “Their data dashboards provides the school they partner with the ability to get really granular.”
Or Data Insight software allows their teachers to “get into the weeds”
But this fall, the Clark County School District forced schools to use THEIR data software. Their newly created data software. Which looks like a clone of Data Insight Partners’ software. Except… it doesn’t work as well and isn’t reliable.
One principal told me, “It’s just a smidge better than spreadsheets.”
Oops.