Student Originated Software 1997-1998 Fall Quarter
		A Software Engineering Course at The Evergreen State College

Project Proposal Champion: Project Name or Current Identifier: School budgets and the internet: Improving schools and enhancing community participation Outside Contact Person: Andy Gordon Outside Contact Person E-mail: acg@u.washington.edu Web Site: Customer Organization (or user base): Project is done in conjunction the Cross City Campaign on Urban School Reform, the Seattle Public Schools, and a group at the University of Washington. Purpose of System: The Seattle Public Schools have dramatically changed the discretion local schools have in how to spend their resources. We plan to enance an on-line budgeting tool and environment (already in prototype) to impact the dynamics of school reform and the level of community knowledge and participation in the future of K-12 education in the US. Brief Description of System Functionality: We already have a working model, where budget info about individual schools can be accessed over the internet, modified, explained, put in a context, compared to other budgets, etc. In conjunction with others concerned about the future of schools, we would like this site to be made more technically and politically robust, enhanced w/ Java, etc. Lots of attention is given to the needs of the audience, user interface issues, etc. The work with an interdisciplinary multi-city team has already proven to be exciting, challenging, and neat! Hardware and Software Platform: We want this to run on under most browsers, and to be useful in communities w/ few computing resources. Current development is on Macs. Nearly all coding is currently in HTML, with Filemaker Pro handling the databases & connected to the web via Lasso. We dip a bit into Java, but carefully since we want this run in most environments. Other Pertinent Information( user interface, etc.): There's lots of enthusiasm for this in various communities. I look forward to talking w/ others who find this an intriguing bundle of issues to work on. We have a full range of programming tools, some foundation support for travel, etc. Possible Follow-On Tasks (beyond the minimum): Cross City Campaign is based in Chicago and plans to use this in cities throughout the US - always with an eye to its strategic consequences for citizens. Features, linked info, etc which are useful in diverse situations (for a wide range of schools; for on-line budgeting in general) are encouraged.