SIF Association (North America) Elects 2014 Leadership

WASHINGTON - March 4, 2014 - PRLog -- The Board brings a wealth of experience and knowledge in education, data management, technology and business acumen. As members of the Board, each individual will be assisting in providing strategic direction, management and oversight for the affairs of the Association for North America.

The 2014 SIF Association North American Management Board includes:
•  George Araya, Desert Sands Unified School District
•  Bethann Canada, Virginia Department of Education
•  Mike Connolly, Pearson
•  Rob Curtin, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
•  Sonya Edwards, California Department of Education
•  Alex Jackl, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
•  Eric Petersen, Kimono
•  Jennifer Schmidt, TRECA
•  Peter Tamayo, Washington State’s Office of Superintendent and Public Instruction
•  Brian Townsend, Vermont Agency of Education
•  Jason Wrage, eSchoolData
•  James Yap, Byram Hills School District
•  Raymond Yeagley, Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA)

“We are thrilled to have such a highly regarded group of educational thought leaders elected onto the North American Management Board of Directors for 2014” stated Larry Fruth II, Ph.D., CEO/Executive Director, SIF Association.  "Since the release of the SIF Specification (North America) 3.0, there has never been more of an emphasis on interoperability, data privacy, and data security, and these education leaders are ideally placed to drive the adoption of open, community developed data standards throughout the education marketplace”.

Also held were elections for the North American Technical Board of Directors, who provide the technical oversight for the SIF (North America) Specifications. The elected 2014 North American Technical Board At-Large seats were:
•  Aaron Harte, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
•  John Lynch, Rediker Software
•  Tom Ngo, Kimono LLC
•  Wendy Riedy, SunGard Education K-12

About the SIF Association
The SIF Association is a unique, non-profit collaboration composed of over 3,200 schools, districts, local authorities, states, US and International Ministries of Education, software vendors and consultants who collectively define the rules and regulations for educational software data interoperability. The SIF Implementation Specification enables diverse applications to interact and share data efficiently, reliably, and securely regardless of the platform hosting those applications. The SIF Association has united these education technology end users and providers in an unprecedented effort to give teachers more time to do what they do best: teach.  For further information, visit http://www.sifassociation.org.