Why most school portals fail in year two

Most school portal projects fail quietly. They launch well, parents log in during the first admissions cycle, staff are trained, everyone is satisfied. Then six months pass, a staff member who understood the system leaves, and the portal slowly reverts to spreadsheets.

The pattern is almost never a technology failure. It's an ownership failure. The system was built for the person who commissioned it, not for whoever inherits it.

The fix is structural, not technical: every institutional platform needs at least two trained internal owners from day one, documentation written for a non-technical reader, and an admin dashboard that doesn't require a developer for routine changes. Build for succession, not just for launch.