Project Proposal
A purpose-built system for The Summit School — owned outright, designed around how your families and admissions team actually work, and built on a modern Laravel foundation.
Stop renting your most important systems. Own them.
Today, Summit's portal, admissions intake, and family communications live inside an all-in-one platform you license year after year. That bundle is convenient — but it's also a black box: you pay premium recurring fees and still inherit its limitations (as our recent SEO audit showed, even the public-facing basics ship broken). This proposal replaces the pieces that matter most to your day-to-day — the family portal, admissions pipeline, communications, and events & giving — with a custom platform that Summit owns, controls, and can extend forever, while keeping your existing student information system in place.
We're not rebuilding a giant CMS. We're building the four systems your staff and families touch every day — tailored exactly to Summit's grades 1–8 program — on a foundation you own, at a fraction of the long-term cost of a licensed platform.
Four modules, one cohesive platform.
A secure, login-gated home base for current Summit families.
From first inquiry to enrolled student — one tracked workflow.
Reach the right families, reliably, on the right channel.
Powering Summit's signature fundraisers and community events.
A modern, maintainable Laravel foundation.
The platform is built on Laravel — the same battle-tested PHP framework that powers a huge share of education and SaaS products. It's secure, well-documented, and easy to maintain or hand off, so Summit is never locked into a single vendor.
Role-based access, audit logging, encryption at rest, and FERPA-conscious handling of minors' records from day one.
Designed to WCAG 2.1 AA so the portal meets the accessibility standards schools are held to.
Integrates with your existing student information system for rosters & families — no need to replace what already works.
Clean, documented code Summit owns outright. New features can be added anytime, by us or any Laravel developer.
Phased delivery — value in your hands early.
Each phase produces something usable. We start with discovery and the portal foundation, then layer in admissions, communications, and giving, finishing with SIS integration, data migration, and launch hardening.
Requirements workshops, SIS discovery (identifying and scoping the integration), data model, brand & UX direction, project plan sign-off.
Authentication, roles, family accounts, dashboard, document sharing, calendar, directory, and the forms/e-sign engine.
Inquiry forms, online application, status checklists, admissions CRM, decision letters, and enrollment deposits.
Segmented email, SMS, emergency alerts, templates, scheduling, deliverability configuration, and send reporting.
Event registration/ticketing, donation pages, Stripe payments, receipts, donor records, and exportable reports.
Connect to Summit's student information system, migrate existing data, security hardening, accessibility audit, staff training, and go-live.
Estimated total timeline: ~5 months. Phases can be re-sequenced to match Summit's priorities (e.g. admissions before launch of the next enrollment cycle).
A one-time build, then a low monthly to keep it running.
| Build phase | Deliverable | Investment |
|---|---|---|
| Phase 0 | Discovery & Architecture (incl. SIS scoping) | $2,500 |
| Phase 1 | Family Portal Foundation | $9,500 |
| Phase 2 | Admissions & Inquiry Pipeline | $8,500 |
| Phase 3 | Communications | $5,500 |
| Phase 4 | Events & Online Giving | $5,500 |
| Phase 5 | SIS Integration, Migration & Launch | $6,000 |
| One-time build | Complete custom platform, owned by Summit | $37,500 |
| Ongoing | What it covers | Monthly |
|---|---|---|
| Care & Support Plan | Managed hosting, security updates, daily backups, monitoring, deliverability upkeep, and a monthly block of support & minor changes. | $500/mo |
Payment schedule: 30% deposit to begin ($11,250), with the balance billed per phase as each is delivered. The monthly Care & Support Plan begins at launch. SIS integration in Phase 5 is scoped against your specific platform during Phase 0 discovery; if the chosen SIS lacks a usable API, we'll present options before any work begins.
You own the asset — and pay less over time.
An all-in-one school platform commonly runs $10,000–$25,000+ per year in licensing. At $37,500 to build plus $6,000/yr to maintain, Summit's custom platform typically pays for itself within 2–3 years — and from then on costs a fraction of the rented alternative, while being worth more as an owned asset.
Clear lines on what's in.
How we get started.