The letter arrives
It comes the same week every year, and the price is up again. Nothing new has been added that anyone asked for, and the small print is clear: stop paying, and the school loses access to its own records. Years of report cards, fee histories and admissions files sit on someone else's servers.
The decision
The board stops asking how to negotiate and starts asking why the school is renting at all. Hylen builds a system around how the school already works: admissions, fees, report cards, the timetable and a parent portal, on the school's own domain and email. The full code and every record are handed over.
What changes
Renewal season comes and goes without a letter. When the head wants a new report layout or a boarding module, it is added to the school's own system instead of waiting on a vendor's plans. Staff learn one system, and it stays theirs.
Why it matters
The code, the data and the domain belong to the school. Nobody can raise the price on records the school owns, and nobody can switch them off. If the school ever wants to host it elsewhere or hand it to its own developers, it can.
