After many years of frustration with MMS, the former Student Information System (SIS), Pembroke School District switched to ALMA, a new SIS, for the 2018-19 school year.

A committee composed of tech integrators, administration and teachers reached the decision on behalf the nine schools in SAU 53, which represents Pembroke, Allenstown, Chichester, Epsom and Deerfield. The committee considered five different systems, one option of which was to stay with MMS. They then narrowed the choice down to two, and the majority chose ALMA.

The committee decided that it was time for change since MMS was becoming “unreliable,” said PA director of curriculum Mr. Morris.  

“[MMS] was losing data, it had connectivity issues, and it was difficult for the competency-based grading,” he said.

While ALMA has experienced some glitches, Mr. Morris is confident in the decision. “Once it is up and running, people will appreciate it,” he said.

According to Mr. Morris, another big reason the district chose ALMA had to do with their technicians’ response time to problems. ALMA, based in Portland, Oregon, takes about 20 minutes to respond to problems.

Some students, however, are not happy with the new system.

One of the reasons that students and staff are having some difficulties acclimating to ALMA is due to the fact a lot of the data, grades and transcripts, have not completely transitioned over yet.

“You can’t tell exactly why you got a grade,” said senior Kayla Paquin. “it doesn’t tell you what specifically you need to do to raise it. And there is no access to your GPA or transcripts.”

Freshman Rileigh Cushing describes ALMA as “very confusing.”

“It doesn’t load well, and I don’t like the grading scale,” she said. “One good thing is that you can contact your teachers through it.”

Science teacher Mr. Riel believes that the school wanted to modernize the system yet he finds ALMA frustrating.

“We need to look for something that is better than where we were, and I am not pleased,” he said. “But it works well with competency-based grading.”