ONLINE EDUCATION
PRnewswire | May 29, 2023
SSC Services for Education, a leading provider of educational facilities services, along with ISSA, the worldwide cleaning industry association, are proud to announce that in addition to achieving recertification of ISSA Cleaning Industry Management Standard (CIMS) Green Building (GB) with Honors, SSC has become one of the first organizations to receive the Advanced by the Global Biorisk Advisory Council (GBAC) certification.
This certification builds on SSC's advanced 50 years of expertise in custodial services, grounds management, and educational facilities maintenance, helping ensure students and faculty are safe and thrive in the spaces they call home during the school day.
The CIMS-GB certification is a rigorous and comprehensive evaluation of an organization's management and operational excellence in the cleaning industry. The certification criteria include management best practices, performance systems, and sustainable cleaning practices. By achieving this certification, SSC has demonstrated its commitment to providing high-quality services that promote health, safety, and environmental sustainability.
"Even before the pandemic, we took great care to keep schools clean and open during flu season and other illness outbreaks and that commitment has only continued," said Seth Ferriell, CEO of SSC. "Being one of the first organizations to achieve the Advanced by GBAC certification so quickly after the new guidelines were introduced is a testament to our team's ability to provide exceptional services without sacrificing our focus on environmental sustainability."
The Advanced by GBAC certification requires organizations to have:
• Established and maintained a cleaning, disinfection, and infectious disease prevention program to minimize risks associated with infectious agents.
• The proper cleaning protocols, disinfection techniques, and work practices in place to combat biohazards and infectious disease.
• Highly informed cleaning professionals who are trained for outbreak and infectious disease preparation and response.
This certification is designed to help organizations prevent, respond to, and recover from biohazard situations. By obtaining the Advanced by GBAC certification, SSC has demonstrated its ability to provide safe and healthy environments for its clients, employees, and communities year-round, as well as during times of crisis.
"Every day, we're focused on creating sustainable and healthy environments where students, staff, and communities thrive, and the CIMS, GB-Honors, and GBAC certifications reaffirm our focus on innovation and industry leadership," added Ferriell.
About SSC Services for Education
SSC Services for Education, based in Knoxville, Tennessee, provides customized facility solutions to over 1000 K-12 and Higher Education schools nationwide. Our 10,000+ employees partner with these educational institutions to further the success and well-being of students, staff, and faculty by delivering quality facilities programs – custodial, grounds, and maintenance. As a trusted and specialized provider, we are committed to enhancing educational settings and creating financial guarantees. With SSC, students and staff flourish in improved surroundings, while partner schools focus on their core objective: educating future generations.
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TALENT DEVELOPMENT
Businesswire | April 19, 2023
PowerSchool ,a leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, today announced two new features coming to the PowerSchool Personalized Learning Cloud. Starting in May, all schools and districts using Schoology Learning, part of the Personalized Learning Cloud, will be able to access a robust lesson planning tool to expedite creating and delivering lesson plans. PowerSchool is also launching a new standards-aligned assessment database, making it easier for educators to use Performance Matters in the Personalized Learning Cloud to build assessments and access meaningful results to guide instruction.
Designed to simplify the task of creating and managing lesson plans, the new lesson planning feature accessible in Schoology Learning will provide teachers with customizable templates to create detailed lesson plans that can be shared with colleagues and students. Teachers can attach resources, such as videos, articles, and assignments, to their lesson plans, making it easy for students to access all necessary materials in one place. Combined with a simplified calendar view to help teachers see all their lessons and assignments in one place, the Personalized Learning Cloud provides teachers with even more tools to create engaging and effective learning opportunities for students.
“We’re dedicated to providing turnkey solutions for educators so they can properly manage any and all tasks related to curriculum planning, personalized instruction, and student performance assessments,” said Jean Teillon, Group Vice President, Product, PowerSchool. “We're confident the updates to the Personalized Learning Cloud will provide teachers with the tools and data-backed insights needed to effectively plan for and deliver quality instruction to students."
With these enhancements, the Personalized Learning Cloud will provide educators building and delivering assessments in Performance Matters with access to numerous standards-aligned items that can be used to support personalized learning efforts. It also helps teachers easily access appropriate assessment items based on state standards and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK) that can be used to build both formative and practice comprehensive assessment versions. Now instructors can identify student performance gaps and indicators of learning loss, while also providing educators with the proper support to easily monitor student academic progress. School and district administrators who want to expand their access to pre-made content can also upgrade to the full subscription-based PowerSchool Item and Assessment bank, which consists of an even larger collection of ready-made items, common formative assessments, and summative benchmark assessments built to inform instruction.
The Personalized Learning Cloud is designed to help educators efficiently personalize instruction and learning to support better learning outcomes for all learners. The newly available features are intuitive and will help provide teachers with more time back so they can focus on providing high-quality instruction to their students.
“Educators have made it clear they need access to tools and content so they can create more personalized lessons to meet the unique learning needs of all learners,” said Marcy Daniel, Chief Product Officer, PowerSchool. “The new features within the Personalized Learning Cloud will not only provide teachers with time back but also provide them with clearer oversight of student performance.”
About PowerSchool
PowerSchool is the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. Its mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their full potential, in their way. PowerSchool connects students, teachers, administrators, and parents, with the shared goal of improving student outcomes. From the office to the classroom to the home, it helps schools and districts efficiently manage state reporting and related compliance, special education, finance, human resources, talent, registration, attendance, funding, learning, instruction, grading, assessments and analytics in one unified platform. PowerSchool supports over 50 million students globally and more than 15,000 customers, including more than 90 of the top 100 districts by student enrollment in the United States, and sells solutions in more than 90 countries.
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TALENT DEVELOPMENT
PRnewswire | May 02, 2023
Today, Stemuli—a gaming company at the intersection of AI, education, and workforce development—announced the merger of Infinity.careers and Oppti into Stemuli, with all companies focused on providing career navigation tools to empower students with the skills needed to thrive in the 21st century economy.
Stemuli, led by Taylor Shead, Founder & CEO, is a Black and woman-owned company with a mission to provide a pathway to an intellectually and economically fulfilling career for all. Naomi Thomas, Founder of infinity.careers, will take on the role of Head of Digital for Stemuli, while Khiry Kemp, Co-founder of Oppti, will serve as Head of Operations. The company announced the merger was made possible because the three founders met in Jobs for the Future's (JFF) Entrepreneur in Residence incubator, led by JFFLabs, JFF's innovation lab, which brings together talented and driven entrepreneurs to collaborate and solve real-world problems.
"Stemuli is a shining example of what can happen when we bring together and incubate talented and driven entrepreneurs to collaborate and catalyze new ways to support people facing systemic barriers to advancement," said Kristina Francis, executive director of JFFLabs, JFF's innovation lab. "We are thrilled to see the success of our program in action, and we look forward to seeing the impact this merger will have on the future of learning."
According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, access to capital is a major barrier for black entrepreneurs. Despite making up over 13% of the US population, Black-owned businesses only receive less than 1% of venture capital. The merger of Infinity.careers and Oppti into Stemuli highlights the power of Black founders coming together in a way that hasn't been done before, and demonstrates their commitment to creating new opportunities in the edtech space.
"This merger marks an important milestone for both black entrepreneurs and the edtech industry as a whole," said Taylor Shead, Founder and CEO of Stemuli. "We are excited to join forces and bring our collective expertise to create a company that truly empowers students and addresses the needs of the education system. We believe that education is the key to unlocking opportunities and driving social and economic mobility, and we are committed to making that a reality for students across the country."
About Stemuli:
Stemuli is a Black and woman-owned gaming company at the intersection of AI, education, and workforce development.Stemuli is a Black and woman-owned gaming company at the intersection of AI, education, and workforce development. Stemuli connects students to meaningful career development experiences and maintains a portfolio of students’ every achievement, certification, and development milestones to help them showcase the to the marketplace and land the job of their dreams.
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