RFI 2027-037 FL Parent Transparency Portal.pdf

RFI 2027-037 Page 1 of 8

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

for

Florida Parent Transparency Portal

RFI 2027-037

Florida Department of Education 325 West Gaines Street

Tallahassee, FL 32399-0400

Please email submissions to:

Attn: Winston McGriff

Email: Winston.McGriff1@fldoe.org

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Florida Parent Transparency Portal

Purpose and Scope

I. INTRODUCTION

The State of Florida, Department of Education (the Department), is requesting information from qualified vendors regarding options for providing a single statewide platform that leverages existing parent portal solutions or determining whether a new platform is needed to streamline implementation timelines, reduce costs, and provide parents with access to a statewide Parent Transparency Portal.

The portal is intended to provide parents and the public with accessible, timely, and comprehensive views of student enrollment counts, key reporting metrics, and relevant education data across publicly funded education options in Florida from Early Learning to Florida College System, including traditional public schools, charter schools, private schools and other providers participating in state scholarship programs, and postsecondary institutions.

The Department seeks information regarding solution options, vendor experience, implementation approaches, interoperability, privacy and security controls, engagement of scholarship-participating private schools, estimated costs, timelines, and ongoing support models. Responses will inform planning, legislative and budget considerations, and any future procurement activities.

THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR COMPETITIVE BIDS OR A REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS,

AND NO CONTRACT WILL BE AWARDED IN RESPONSE TO SUBMISSIONS.

If, as a result of the Request for Information (RFI), the Department decides to pursue contract(s) to provide any of the services mentioned, and vendors capable of providing such services are identified, then a competitive procurement package will be developed and issued at a later date.

II. PROGRAM BACKGROUND

The Department maintains public education data systems and portals, including the Know Your Schools portal for traditional and charter public K-12 schools accessible at www.KnowYourSchoolsFL.org.

However, parents currently lack a single interface that consolidates existing portal data on enrollment counts, performance indicators, test scores, and/or key reporting information across the full continuum of publicly supported education options from Early Learning through

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Postsecondary, particularly for private schools receiving Family Empowerment Scholarship and related funds.

The Department is exploring a more inclusive and interoperable approach that supports clear, comparable information for families and encourages voluntary or structured participation by scholarship-participating private schools. The intended portal would strengthen parental empowerment, inform school choice, and system-wide K-20 accountability by making relevant information transparent, understandable, and usable.

Guiding principles include:

• Parent empowerment through readily accessible and comparable information.

• Academic, financial, and operational transparency as foundations of accountability.

• Leverage existing portals when possible.

• Interoperability with existing state accountability systems, student information systems, and future data initiatives.

• Protection of student privacy and clear identification of data sources, definitions, and coverage.

III. PROGRAM GOALS

The primary goal is to identify technology solutions and implementation approaches for a statewide Parent Transparency Portal that improves access to comparable education information while integrating with Florida’s existing accountability infrastructure. The solution should maximize parent utility, support long-term sustainability, and accommodate participation by education providers with varying technical capacity.

The statewide portal should address the following goals and capabilities:

1. Core Parent-Facing Functionality

• Provide an intuitive, mobile-friendly interface for viewing aggregated and, where privacy-protected, school-level student enrollment counts by sector (e.g., early learning, K-12 traditional public, charter, scholarship participating-private, technical colleges, and state colleges), grade level, available demographics, and trends over time.

• Provide access to key reporting and accountability data, potentially including academic performance indicators, graduation or completion rates where applicable, attendance, aggregated discipline summaries, dual enrollment, career and technical education, advanced coursework, success outcomes for postsecondary including completion and workforce outcomes and other metrics collected or reasonably collectible.

• Provide search, comparison, and filtering tools that allow parents to evaluate options side-by-side.

• Provide plain-language explanations, data dictionaries, and visualizations that make complex data understandable to non-experts.

2. Inclusion of Scholarship-Participating Private Schools

• Enable private schools receiving state scholarship funds to voluntarily, or under structured agreements, submit or link relevant enrollment counts, basic demographic aggregates, and selected performance or outcome data.

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• Provide user-friendly data submission portals or API-based upload processes for schools with varying technical capacity.

• Support incentives, templates, privacy-compliant data-sharing agreements, and technical assistance models that encourage broad participation without undue administrative burden.

• Display participating in private-school data alongside public and charter school data in a consistent, comparable format while clearly labeling data sources and coverage.

3. Linkages and Interoperability

• Integrate with or provide API linkages to current Department systems, including school grades and accountability reporting, PK-12 data collections, advanced reporting tools, and FETPIP outcomes.

• Integrate with current Department portals, including MyFloridaSchools and Know Your Schools and advanced interactive dashboards.

• Connect, as appropriate, with district and school student information systems, potential Learning and Employment Record systems, and other state or national data sources.

• Support future expansion to additional outcome metrics, financial transparency elements, or curriculum and materials disclosures aligned with academic transparency principles.

• Provide robust privacy, security, and FERPA-compliant controls, including role-based access, aggregation thresholds, and audit logging.

4. AI-Enabled Parent Navigation Capabilities

• Personalized service discovery: Parents could answer plain-language questions about their child’s grade level, educational setting, location, learning needs, interests, and goals. The AI tool would provide relevant program categories and explain why each may be applicable.

• Statutory requirement summaries: The tool would summarize applicable Florida statutory and rule requirements in parent-friendly language, including eligibility criteria, documentation requirements, deadlines, and responsible entities.

• Eligibility preparation guidance: The tool could generate checklists to help parents prepare for applications, meetings, evaluations, or enrollment decisions.

• Plain-language explanations: The tool would translate complex statutory, programmatic, and procedural language into clear summaries while preserving links to authoritative source documents maintained by the Department or state law.

• Multilingual and accessibility support: The tool should support accessibility standards and provide information in multiple languages commonly used by Florida families.

• Escalation to human support: The tool should refer parents to the appropriate district, early learning coalition, scholarship funding organization, or Department contact when a question requires official review or individualized determination.

5. Additional Desired Capabilities

• Downloadable reports, open data APIs for third-party tools, and export options.

• Accessibility consistent with applicable ADA and WCAG requirements, multilingual support, and plain-language design.

• Scalability for Florida’s student population and high concurrent usage.

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• Maintenance and hosting options, including state-hosted, cloud, and hybrid models;

update processes; and total cost of ownership models.

• A roadmap for continuous improvement based on parent feedback and evolving policy needs.

IV. OBJECTIVE

The objective of this RFI is to identify existing platforms, commercial solutions, and proposed architectures that can be adapted to create a statewide Parent Transparency Portal. The Department is seeking information on approaches that provide clear and comparable education data, support participation by scholarship schools, protect student privacy, integrate with existing systems, and minimize long-term cost and vendor dependence.

V. PURPOSE

This RFI is issued to obtain information regarding solution options, respondent experience, implementation and sustainment approaches, policy considerations, timelines, and cost models.

The information may be used to support future planning, budget requests, legislative reporting, and procurement activities.

VI. PROCESS

Department management will review and analyze information received to determine the feasibility and preferred approach for a potential future competitive solicitation or other authorized arrangement. Any cost information requested will be used solely to understand potential budgetary magnitude and ownership considerations.

Responses to this request will be reviewed for informational purposes only and will not result in the award of a contract. Vendors submitting a response to this RFI are not prohibited from responding to any related subsequent solicitation.

VII. RESPONSE FORMAT

Respondents are requested to address all items below and organize their submission using the following structure.

• Company or organization literature, including a corporate or organizational overview, structure, financial soundness and stability where applicable, and services currently offered.

• Point-of-contact information, including primary representative, alternate representative if available, telephone number, and email address.

Section 1: Corporate History and Relevant Experience

• Describe corporate or organizational history and experience developing comparable statewide education portals, parent dashboards, school-choice data tools, or open-source education data platforms.

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• Describe similar engagements, comparable deployments, references, case studies, demonstration environments, key lessons learned, and measurable outcomes where available.

• Describe available solutions or proposed approaches and the typical steps for deployment.

Section 2: Proposed Solution and Parent-Facing Capabilities

• Describe the proposed platform, commercial product, or architecture and how it aligns with the Program Goals.

• Describe mobile-responsive design, search, comparison, filtering, visualization, data dictionary, plain-language, multilingual, and accessibility capabilities.

• Describe role-based views and secure access for parents, school administrators, researchers, public users, and internal Department users, as applicable.

Section 3: Scholarship School Participation and Data Submission

• Describe approaches for engaging and onboarding scholarship-participating private schools, including technical, legal, policy, and operational considerations.

• Describe data submission portals, templates, file upload methods, APIs, validation, technical assistance, and approaches suitable for schools with varying technical capacity.

• Describe proposed methods for identifying data sources, coverage, definitions, limitations, and participation status.

Section 4: Data Integration, Interoperability, and Architecture

• Describe integration strategies for Department systems, district and school student information systems, and other relevant state or national data sources.

• Identify data standards, common education data models, interoperability frameworks, API approaches, data exchange methods, and export capabilities.

• Describe the proposed modular architecture, licensing terms, code ownership, configuration options, and measures to reduce vendor lock-in.

• Describe scalability, performance, availability, hosting, disaster recovery, monitoring, and support approaches.

Section 5: Privacy, Security, and Data Governance

• Describe privacy and security frameworks, FERPA-aligned controls, applicable student data privacy protections, role-based access, aggregation thresholds, audit logging, and security monitoring.

• Describe data governance, data quality, metadata management, validation, correction, retention, and records-management approaches.

• Describe how the Department and participating education entities retain appropriate authority over data and system access.

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Section 6: Implementation, Training, and Documentation

• Provide a typical implementation approach, including discovery, requirements validation, design, configuration or development, integration, data migration, testing, deployment, and transition to operations.

• Provide timeline estimates for a minimum viable product and full rollout, including assumptions and key dependencies.

• Identify technical, user, administrative, security, data, configuration, API, operations, and maintenance documentation that may be provided.

• Describe training and knowledge-transfer plans for Department staff, participating schools, and other users.

Section 7: Cost and Total Cost of Ownership

• Identify typical costs across the development and deployment life cycle, including discovery, design, development or configuration, licensing, migration, integration, quality assurance, accessibility testing, security activities, training, hosting, maintenance, support, and enhancement.

• Specify typical development and implementation costs.

• Specify typical data migration and integration costs.

• Specify ownership, licensing, hosting, maintenance, support, and enhancement costs.

• Describe pricing models for open-source, commercial, and hybrid options, including assumptions, cost drivers, optional services, and potential cost ranges.

Section 8: Policy and Statutory Considerations

• Identify recommended policy, statutory, regulatory, data-sharing, or governance adjustments that could facilitate meaningful private-school participation while protecting student privacy.

• Identify any legal, operational, or technical constraints that the Department should consider in future planning or procurement.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

A. Time Schedule (ALL DATES IN RFI SUBJECT TO CHANGE.)

The following timetable shows the approximate dates for this RFI. All times indicated are Eastern Standard Time (EST).

Request for Information Issued

September 1, 2026

Questions Due no later than

September 11, 2026 @ 4:00 p.m., EST

Answers to Vendors on or about

September 22, 2026

Receipt of e-mailed RFI responses

October 12, 2026 @ 3:00 p.m., EST

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PLEASE PROVIDE RESPONSES VIA EMAIL

B. Questions and Restrictions

The Department may be contacted via email (preferred) or fax regarding submission of questions concerning this RFI. Respondents’ questions must be submitted in writing and received by the Department on or before the specified due date at the following email address or fax:

Please send questions to:

Attn: Winston McGriff 325 W. Gaines Street, Suite 344

Tallahassee, FL 32399-0400 Email (preferred): Winston.McGriff1@fldoe.org

Fax Number: 850-245-0719 Telephone Number: 850-245-0733

Answers will be posted on the Florida Vendor Information Portal (VIP) at https://vendor.myfloridamarketplace.com/ (click on Search Advertisements under the Florida Solicitation Advertisement section, then populate the Organization field with the Department of Education. Initiate search by clicking the Search button). Click on this RFI number to review posted documents. It is the responsibility of all Respondents to monitor this site for any changing information prior to submitting a response.

https://vendor.myfloridamarketplace.com/