What’s the status of on-line registration?

Our school board recently approved the contract for on-line registration with Infinite Campus.  Programmers will need at least 4 months to complete the necessary work – which means that on-line registration will not be available until mid to late May 2013.

Q1, How does this impact registration at the elementary schools that typically do mail in registration starting in Feb/March?
A1. Elementary schools will be asked to proceed with their existing paper based registration that are typically mailed home to parents.  When parents return their demographic sheets, if there are changes/updates that need to be made, schools will send them to the District Registrar for processing.

Q2.  How does this impact secondary schools that typically wait until August for registration?
A2. We anticipate using the new on-line registration this summer to assist with secondary school enrollments – however, it will not fully replace on-site registration, as parents/students will still need to attend on site registration in August.

Q3.  When it’s implemented – exactly how does it work?
A3.  It starts by emailing the parents and inviting them to visit a website where they can confirm if they are planning to return to school in the fall or not.  They also have the ability to see their existing information, as well the ability to edit/modify this information.  This is information is then routed to the District Registrar, who approves updated information as well as provides a list to the schools for who is returning, who is not, and who hasn’t responded.

Q4. When it’s implemented, parents will no longer have to visit the school during August, correct?
A4.  Incorrect.  On-site registration will still need to take place, as that’s where student have their photo taken for their ID badge, pick up their schedules, and other tasks.  Our desire is to move part of the registration on-line too streamline the process as much as possible, but not to remove the on-site component.

Q5. Will parents be able to pay for school fees on-line?
A5.  Yes, this component is already available within RevTrak and will be available to parents as a part of the online registration.

Is your school looking to setup online registration for parent-teacher conferences?

Is your school looking to set up online registration for parent-teacher conferences?  Here’s a quick glimpse at how a few of our schools using various solutions for parent-teacher conference  registrations.

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Stilwell Junior High

Solution: Canyon Creek Software   http://www.canyoncreeksoftware.com/onlinescheduler.cfm

What tips or advice would you offer to other schools:
Send out extra information multiple time families.  Somehow, some said they missed it.  We mailed information home and sent out information via email.

How do you assist non-english speaking families?
Our ESL team helped us by sending out notices in Spanish, as well assisted families with scheduling.

What is the annual cost?
For our school, it was $350 per year.

Information provided by: Tim Miller, millert@wdmcs.org

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Jordan Creek Elementary

Solution:  School Bookings  http://www.schoolbookings.net

Have you tried other solutions? If so, why did you select this one?
Yes, we’ve tried other solutions and have found that school bookings is the lowest cost and the least amount of set up time.  For example, on some systems, we had to import all the parents and generate their accounts, which took a tremendous amount of time.  With School Bookings, we simply add the teachers, open the date ranges for conferences, and then let teachers set their specific schedules.  Then parents can go in sign-up for conferences.  We also like that parents can select multiple teachers they want to meet with and it filters through all the schedules for them.

What challenges have you run into?
One downfall is that you must have the same time frame for all conferences in the building (ours is set for 20 minutes).  For example, band and orchestra only has 10 minute conferences so we had to get creative.

Contact person:  Jeff Ver Helst    verhelstj@wdmcs.org

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Westridge Elementary

Solution:  School Bookings  http://www.schoolbookings.net

Why did you select it?
We followed Jordan Creek Elementary and are using School Bookings.   It was only $150.

How do you assist non-english speaking families?
The ELL/ELP/Sped etc had to schedule ahead of time and then the classroom teacher went in a blocked off that slot.

Any challenges?
It didn’t meet our needs for the way 6th grade conferences operate, so we didn’t use it for 6th grade.

Information provided by Julie Kaufman,  kaufmanj@wmdcs.org

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Crossroads Park Elementary and Hillside Elementary

Solution:  School Bookings  http://www.schoolbookings.net

What challenges did you run into?
Everyone must use the same conference length – which we’ve set to 15 minutes.  Some grade levels don’t use the system because it doesn’t meet their needs.

Any tips or advice for other schools?
We pre-schedule ELL and Special Education conferences as needed.  The teachers or the secretary have to input that information before we open the entire schedule to all parents.

We always say that parents are able to stop in at the school and the designated people(secretary usually) will help them get signed up.  I did have a couple of parents come in and use the media center computers as we offered that as an alternative.

Information provided by Melodee Grefe,  grefem@wmdcs.org

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