Randy Brison, founder and proprietor of Tennessee Schools Reporting Services LLC, has been a journalist, editor, teacher, coach, student data manager, and entrepreneur (details below).
A reader with a fertile imagination, young Randy created, publishing a family newspaper and writing short stories. He also invented gadgets, building (among other things) super-powered electromagnets and model airboats on egg carton frames.
A desire to help others led him into education. A hatred of repetitive tasks turned him toward computer programming. He wrote grade and stats programs when he became a teacher and baseball coach. Years later, he landed in a middle school computer lab, where he continued his self-directed education in coding. He dabbled in HTML for a website, crafted custom spreadsheets for staff, and set up a system for collaborative remediation tracking.
A friend who happened to be principal asked Randy to learn about scheduling using a student information system, planting the seeds for TenSSRS (pronounced Ten-Zers). That eventually resulted in a job as the student data manager for the district. He spent eight and a half years learning the ropes of state reporting, data integration, and funding acquisition. He assisted teachers, administrators, district directors, and aspiring Ph.D. candidates with everything from calculating grades to acquiring millions of dollars in funds.
Facing increasing demands for data import, export, and integration, he began to construct applets to handle mundane tasks, diving deeper into the world of SQL, JavaScript, Google App Script and Visual Basic for Applications.
Motivated by a conversation with one of his peers, he worked in his basement to develop FundMax by TennSRS, an enhanced spreadsheet leveraging VBA to shrink the time needed to find funding leaks from hours to minutes.
Having left Dickson County Schools at the end of 2019, he now assists friends scattered across Tennessee district offices who have too many tasks and too little time.
THE TennSRS MISSION is to help public school data specialists maximize funding in the most efficient ways possible. Millions flow from Tennessee taxpayers into school districts through a system enacted by legislation and designed by the state to distribute money so that every student has an equal opportunity for education. Average Daily Membership, a measure of students’ enrollment length, determines distribution. Most school districts have one person (or a department, depending on its size) whose job entails making sure the system collects its fair share of state dollars. BEPSFAMs — Basic Education Program Specialists for Acquiring Money — make sure that all students are enrolled and scheduled correctly in both local and state databases.
WORK EXPERIENCE — BS in English, Middle Tennessee State University, 1985 // Journalist, Williamson Leader & Dickson Herald, 1985-86 // Editor, Waverly News-Democrat, 1986-87 // English Teacher & Baseball Coach, Dickson County High School, 1987-92 // MA in English, Tennessee Technological University, 1994 // Teaching Assistant & Adjunct Faculty Member, TTU, 1992-95 // Homemaker, 1995-1999 // Freelance Writer & Editor, 1995-99 // Substitute and Adult Teacher, Dickson County, 1995-1999 // Teacher, Golf Coach, WebMaster & Scheduler, Dickson Middle School, 1999-2011 // Student Data Manager, Dickson County Schools, 2011-2019 // President & Proprietor, Tennessee Schools Reporting Services LLC, 2019 – Present