Austin ISD

Update: 12/21/2023

Austin ISD agreed to purchase a district license for the Spring of 2024! Individual teachers will not need to subscribe to Teachertools.

Previous Update: 4/28/2023

Hello Austin ISD Teachers,

Thank you for using Teachertools and I am grateful so many of you have found it beneficial enough to pay for.

Teachertools will revert to being free for all teachers for the remainder of the 2022-2023 school year. All payments will be refunded the week of May 1st and Teachertools will no longer require a login/subscription for the remainder of the 2022-2023 school year.

This will hopefully give Austin ISD time to arrange an enterprise license for the 2023-2024 school year begins.

Why the change?

Teachertools has been free for use since it was released in the summer of 2020 and Eric Shaffer has not been compensated (yet) by any district for its development or ongoing support. When Austin ISD changed Frontline servers in January, 2023, Teachertools broke and the lack of this tool escalated to the Austin ISD leadership team. Austin ISD leadership met with Eric and asked him to update Teachertools but said they cannot pay for the service because Eric is a current employee of Austin ISD. As a teacher himself, Eric didn’t want to deprive other teachers of a useful time-saving tool and reenabled access.

Due to many life changes (Notably: I am getting married, buying a house, and starting a family) I no longer have the available night and weekend time to work on Teachertools as a side project and want this to become a profitable endeavor. I started charging for access on March 22, 2023 to prove the validity of this becoming a source of income and have been amazed at the number of teachers who have subscribed.

However, last week I was reading the Bible and a verse struck me. Ecclesiastes 4:6 says “Better one handful with tranquillity than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.” Turning Teachertools in to a profitable business while still being employed as a full time teacher was an attempt at getting ‘two handfuls’ but it brought with it much toil and anxiety. So, I am reverting to focusing on one handful at a time: Finishing out my teaching career in the next five weeks and then this summer and next year I will have the time to focus on my next endeavor.

Thank you,

Eric Shaffer
eric@teachertools.me

If you wish to support me and my new family you can donate to the cause here.