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Seattle Public Schools sends ‘urgent’ message about grade-viewing app — here’s the backstory

Seattle Public Schools sent an email Monday evening informing families and staff that a grade-viewing app for iOS called “The Source: SPS” was not authorized by the district, and advising them to delete it immediately.

Describing it as an “urgent matter,” the district cited the similarities to its official portal, The Source, and said the developers of the app were “inappropriately using the SPS name and logo without our permission.”

The district’s message added, “SPS has verified this developer does not have access to SPS data, such as logins, passwords and grades, which is held locally on each user’s personal cellphone. We are taking all available and appropriate steps to stop the misleading marketing of this application to the SPS community.”

The message noted that there was “a $7.99 fee to download the app.”

GeekWire looked into the issue this morning and learned that the app was actually developed and successfully offered for three years by an SPS alum — Evan Mazor, a 2023 Roosevelt High School graduate who is now a computer science student at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. Mazor had offered “The Source: SPS” for free.

So what happened? Turns out the app was acquired last month by a company called GradePro. The company has been migrating “The Source: SPS” users to its own app, which offers subscriptions including a $7.99 yearly plan.

Mazor announced the acquisition last week on LinkedIn, writing, in part:

This is a huge accomplishment for me and the culmination of three years of constant work on the app to fix bugs, implement new features, and rework the system to scale with a growing user base.

Last month we achieved over 17,000 monthly active users, and had over 30,000 total downloads. It’s rated 4.5 stars on the App Store with over 550 five-star reviews.

The app is an intuitive mobile interface for an outdated gradebook system in the Seattle Public Schools district. It includes a GPA calculator, attendance data, and ‘what-if’ score sliders, which aren’t provided to students by the school district.

I have loved creating and working on the app, and particularly seeing how it was able to improve the lives of so many students in my hometown. I’d receive emails and reviews that the app was the sole reason that students were able to get organized and improve their grades.

“The Source: SPS” was removed from the App Store this morning, after GeekWire forwarded the SPS email to GradePro and its parent company, the Houston-area company Sparksuite, and asked for comment.

Wes Cossick of GradePro responded via email that the intention was always to move users to GradePro and discontinue “The Source: SPS” app after that point.

“It was a popular app used for years by students and parents in Seattle Public Schools, and we’re excited to bring these users even more features and reliability going forward,” Cossick said. He added, “We completed the migration of users to GradePro last week, so the app has already been removed from the App Store.”

We’ve contacted SPS seeking further information about the situation.