- South Bronx Early College Academy Charter School – Bronx, NY
- Grades Served: 6-8
- Students: 300
Challenge Overview: As a standalone charter school without the resources or structural support of a charter network, South Bronx Early College Academy needed a student information system that could do more than just store grades. Their previous system, Gradelink, offered limited functionality, lacked real-time support, and was unintuitive for staff to navigate. Data management was largely manual, and access to information was fragmented across apps and spreadsheets.
Solution Overview: SBECA selected Alma after an extensive evaluation of platforms including PowerSchool, JumpRope, Jupiter, and others. Alma stood out for its clean design, live customer support, flexibility with grading approaches, and ease of implementation – even without IT staff. The ability to digitize files, centralize communication, and access real-time student data made it the ideal fit for a school managing everything independently.
Results Overview: Since switching to Alma, SBECA has streamlined attendance, eliminated the need for manual “school dashboards,” and empowered teachers to access data directly. Alma’s clarity around grading and real-time visibility into attendance, ILT placement, and student records has saved hours of time, increased staff independence, and deepened collaboration across the school.
“Alma isn’t just easier – it’s smarter. It’s responsive, flexible, and it works the way we work.”
– Tyree Alexander, Data Coordinator
THE CHALLENGE
SBECA serves middle school students in the South Bronx through a rigorous, Common Core–aligned liberal arts curriculum centered on project-based learning and differentiated instruction. As a standalone charter, the school didn’t have access to the centralized infrastructure and resources often provided by charter networks.
Instead, staff were managing operations through a patchwork of Google Sheets, a Google Site dashboard, and a handful of unconnected apps. Their previous SIS, Gradelink, was difficult to navigate, poorly supported, and visually outdated.
“I inherited Gradelink. It literally looked like it was designed for Windows 95,” said Tyree Alexander, Data Coordinator. “It was literally a glorified spreadsheet colored in blue.”
Worse still, staff couldn’t get clear support, nor did the system provide transparency around student or family engagement, scheduling, or broader data access. It was little more than a static repository.
THE SOLUTION
Alma’s onboarding began in spring 2023 – and it was immediately clear SBECA had found the right partner.
“I didn’t feel like I was talking to a sales rep… I was talking to someone who was genuinely interested in the needs of our school.”
From day one, Alma helped address SBECA’s top priorities:
- Attendance: The attendance dashboard on Alma’s homepage gave real-time visibility, sparking cross-team conversations and tightening policies.
- Individualized Learning Time Class Groupings: Teachers now use Alma’s data views to suggest student placements for independent learning time, creating a more collaborative process.
- File Cabinet: Alma’s secure digital storage and bulk upload capabilities replaced scattered folders, saving hours of administrative time.
- School-Wide Data Access: Alma’s interface enabled staff to find what they needed on their own – eliminating daily requests to the front office for data.
- Parent Communication: While parents initially struggled to find the app, a single family engagement night solved the issue, and usage has been smooth since.
- Grading Clarity: Alma’s grading tools offer full transparency in how grades are calculated and allow for real-time support from the Alma team.
THE RESULTS
SBECA no longer relies on piecemeal apps or manually updated dashboards. Alma centralizes everything – grades, files, attendance, communications, and student progress – and makes it accessible to the people who need it.
“Alma isn’t just easier – it’s smarter. It’s responsive, flexible, and it works the way we work.”
Even features like grading calculations and transcript management, once opaque in Gradelink, are now clear and customizable – with support staff available in real time.
“I had a question about how grades were calculated on a transcript… I was talking to a live person instantly – in the moment that I had the question,” Alexander added. “That was not the case with Gradelink at all.”
Looking ahead, SBECA is exploring even more features – including custom fields and special education service tracking – to continue reducing spreadsheet dependency and deepen Alma integration.
“Data access is the number one thing that has drawn us to Alma. We’re using it for everything we used to use Gradelink for – plus 15 more things.”
