About Our Founders

Mary Kay is an elementary school Special Education (SPED) teacher.

It was a thick stack of ABC reports — collected in just one semester, on one student out of her class of 22 — that motivated her to look for a more efficient solution. Losing out on family time and spending increasing resources on admin instead of directly with her students, her frustration was compounded when no user-friendly, cost-effective solution was found.

Mary Kay took it upon herself to recruit a programmer and design a custom solution that could save teachers time while adding other data analysis benefits.

Maxie St.Cyr is a retired SPED teacher who understands the challenges of the classroom and the ever-increasing demands of paperwork on already overworked teachers. As the first person recruited by Mary Kay to help develop SPEDup, Maxie has been instrumental from the very start.

Currently mentoring new teachers, Maxie fully appreciates the lack of time available for training and learning new software, yet recognizes that teachers need tools to alleviate administrative burdens so they can focus on what really matters — their students. With her colleagues in mind, Maxie helped design SPEDup to be easy to learn and easy to use.