Parents district-wide can now log into the new Infinite Campus student database through the campus portal feature and access their children’s demographic information, attendance and immunization records, and progress reports and report cards.##M:[more]##
At the end of last month, the West Windsor-Plainsboro school district sent out information to parents that the feature became available, and so far 40 percent of district parents have logged in, says Steven Mayer, the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, and district officials are trying to get the remaining 60 percent to do so as well.
The new database, which officials worked through the summer to get up and running in time for the beginning of the school year, is web-based so teachers and administrators can access information from anywhere at any time. It also serves as a district-wide data warehouse, allowing student data to be entered once and leveraged across the entire district.
There is a wide range of features to the new system, but for now the goal is for the district to mimic what information it used in its old system, SASI, for scheduling and keeping student information. The new database also has the ability to allow school officials to analyze student test scores and assess how well their programs are doing.
The goal for its first year of implementation is to duplicate what the school district already has done with its other data system, but officials have slowly started introducing the other features so it can use the system as a portal into the school for students, parents, and teachers.
Mayer said a committee he organized spent the summer looking at which features would become available for parents. “We went through everything that was available and decided what things we wanted to make available in September,” he said. And that included the report cards and progress reports, demographic information, and health information, and the logins were created as soon as possible.
“There’s a process where the parents can verify their information, and we can verify it’s actually them, and they can log into the portal,” he says.
Rick Cave, the district’s technology director, says the district sent home a letter to each of the parents with a unique identifier for each. The parents use that identifier to go online to a separate website that district officials created, where they would then enter the ID. Once that is done, the parents have to verify their information. “We want to make sure the data we have is up to date,” he said. “If that information was verified as correct, an E-mail is sent to them.” That E-mail directs the parents to create a username and password for the system, which is entirely up to their choosing.
“Right now the big push is getting parents and students registered and getting all the information cleaned up,” he said. “We pushed over a million records into the new system, and the nice part is that in the push so far, we haven’t found any missing or dropped data. But it was organized differently, and things have been shifted around.” Officials are working on reorganizing the data, he added.
Currently demographic, immunization, and attendance information is available for parents of students in all grade levels, but the report cards and progress reports are only available for those in grades 6 through 12, Mayer said. This is because grading is different for the earlier grade levels, and letter grades do not accurately reflect a child’s progress. Setting up the system to include the special channels and categories for the K-5 grading is underway, he added.
He said there are a few kinks officials are working out. “The biggest issue for us is verifying information and then responding to parents in a timely fashion, and we’ve streamlined the process so our response time is almost immediate,” Mayer said. “If there are corrections that are needed, it takes a week or so.”
As for the teachers and administrators using the system, “everybody’s in a learning curve right now,” says Mayer. “Teachers are becoming more acquainted with it.” He said administrators are coming to a comfort level with the new system. Cave said that most of the teachers that have gone through the training are pleased with the gradebooks.
A committee has been formed to look at the options of making the teachers’ gradebooks available and enabling the calendar function, which allows parents to see when assignments are due and what the teacher has planned on the syllabus.
Students have expressed concern since last year about the ability to enable parental access to their grades, progress, and information about when assignments are due, citing heavy academic pressure they already face in the competitive district. “Opening the teachers’ gradebooks to the parents increases accountability in many respects because there’s really a lot of transparency between the school and home at this point,” Mayer says.
Mayer says, though, that the high school students themselves, starting this week, will be able to have their own logins into the portal to keep track of their own grades and keep organized with regard to assignments.
Cave said that having the connectivity with parents allows district officials to give parents important information to things that are usually mailed home, like report cards, without having to use snail mail, which is what officials are hoping to do. And the primary reason for doing so? Saving money.
“Obviously, we would have to make consideration for those parents who do not have access,” Cave said. But “the big push is trying to get parents online, and involved, and working on the system so we can improve communication with them.” He says another benefit to having this information available online is that it will reduce the probability that an important notice or otherwise important piece of communication gets lost in a student’s backpack.
He said one of the district’s next goals is also to integrate the Infinite Campus system with the district’s transportation system database. Right now, the student database and the transportation database are separate, and integrating the two would mean that once information is updated in Infinite Campus, it will simultaneously be updated in the transportation system as well. School officials are also looking to do the same with the district’s library and food systems as well.
New features of the system, like the parental access to gradebooks and class calendars, will be activated as the committee begins to move on the recommendations. In the meantime, any parent who lost the information regarding their logins can E-mail infinitecampus@ww-p.org. For questions, call Gerri Hutner, at 609-716-5000, ext. 5040.
