School News: Students Launch Company to Help Independent Schools

Spring 2019

As a junior at a small independent boarding school in 2016, Maddie McCarthy saw firsthand some of the unique logistical and safety challenges that schools face, such as needing a better sign-in/sign-out tool for students or managing proctors at libraries. She wanted to develop solutions to help schools solve such challenges.

Courtesy of Independent School Apps
         
So she, along with her classmate Alex Akoundi, began building and customizing software that schools could use as an app. After successfully creating an app to solve a sign-in/sign-out problem at their school, they formed a small company and called it Independent School Apps. The team now works with schools one-on-one to learn about the specific problems they want to address and finds a custom app-based solution.
             
In 2018, Independent School Apps expanded to create multiple apps for several institutions. Now a postgraduate at Deerfield Academy (MA), McCarthy, and co-founder Akoundi, a sophomore at Bucknell University, are beta-testing a few different apps with four schools over the 2018–2019 school year.

For more information, visit independentschoolapps.com.

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