Austin ISD

Update 11/5/2024

Starting November 1st, 2024 Teachertools will require teachers in Austin ISD to Login and have a valid license to import grades.

There are three ways teachers could obtain a valid license: Campus-based, Individual, or Early Supporter

Campus-based license:

The following campuses are purchasing licenses for their staff and accounts have already been created for. If you are at one of those campuses and receive and error saying you are not associated with a campus license, email us at support@teachertools.me

• Akins High School

• Ann Richards

• Austin High

• Bailey Middle School (Only three teachers)

• Bowie High School (Only two teachers)

• Covington Middle School

• Gorzycki Middle School

• Lamar Middle School

• LASA

• McCallum

• Navarro ECHS

• Northeast ECHS

• O Henry Middle School

• Small Middle School

Several others are considering a campus license but have not finalized their decision. Teacher accounts for your school have not been created yet:

• Bertha Sadler Means YWLA

Individual Annual or Monthly License

Teachers can purchase a single-year license for $60 or start a $10/month subscription. When you login you will be prompted to select an option.

Early Supporter License

Teachers who donated to support this project in its early years (2020-ish) are grandfathered into a license.

Regardless of your license type:

Click here to login to Teachertools. You only need your email address and it will send you a sign-in link.

You can also access the login link from the Teachertools icon in the top right of Chrome. You will likely have to click the puzzle piece first before you see it. After you successfully login this popup window will show your email and license status.

Update 9/23/2024

As of 9/20/24 Austin ISD decided not to renew its subscription for the 2024-2025 school year. Teachertools will offer campus and an individual licensing model starting in October.

Licenses will be $60 for the year per person, or teachers can start a $10/month subscription.

There are two options for campuses if they choose to purchase licenses in bulk for a discounted rate:

Option 1) If the campus pays $60 for each of the teachers who used Teachertools last year they will receive a campus-wide license that allows any number of additional teachers to use it this year as well. The list of users is available upon request from school administration.

Option 2) 10% off for a fixed number of licenses, each one tied to a specific teacher email address.

Update: 12/21/2023

Austin ISD agreed to purchase a district license for the Spring of 2024! Individual teachers will not need to subscribe to Teachertools.

Previous Update: 4/28/2023

Hello Austin ISD Teachers,

Thank you for using Teachertools and I am grateful so many of you have found it beneficial enough to pay for.

Teachertools will revert to being free for all teachers for the remainder of the 2022-2023 school year. All payments will be refunded the week of May 1st and Teachertools will no longer require a login/subscription for the remainder of the 2022-2023 school year.

This will hopefully give Austin ISD time to arrange an enterprise license for the 2023-2024 school year begins.

Why the change?

Teachertools has been free for use since it was released in the summer of 2020 and Eric Shaffer has not been compensated (yet) by any district for its development or ongoing support. When Austin ISD changed Frontline servers in January, 2023, Teachertools broke and the lack of this tool escalated to the Austin ISD leadership team. Austin ISD leadership met with Eric and asked him to update Teachertools but said they cannot pay for the service because Eric is a current employee of Austin ISD. As a teacher himself, Eric didn’t want to deprive other teachers of a useful time-saving tool and reenabled access.

Due to many life changes (Notably: I am getting married, buying a house, and starting a family) I no longer have the available night and weekend time to work on Teachertools as a side project and want this to become a profitable endeavor. I started charging for access on March 22, 2023 to prove the validity of this becoming a source of income and have been amazed at the number of teachers who have subscribed.

However, last week I was reading the Bible and a verse struck me. Ecclesiastes 4:6 says “Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” Turning Teachertools in to a profitable business while still being employed as a full time teacher was an attempt at getting ‘two handfuls’ but it brought with it much toil and anxiety. So, I am reverting to focusing on one handful at a time: Finishing out my teaching career in the next five weeks and then this summer and next year I will have the time to focus on my next endeavor.

Thank you,

Eric Shaffer
eric@teachertools.me

If you wish to support me and my new family you can donate to the cause here.