Reviewing new process for printed elementary student directories

Many of our elementary schools put together a printed student directory that is available to parents each year.  We are looking at some changes to the process for how the student directories are created, as we are wanting to streamline the process for schools and we are wanting to improve the data that we collect related to family demographics.

Q1. What is the current process for how student directories are created?
A1.  In prior years, each school would create their own printed student directory.  The district would offer a set of basic student demographic data, but some schools collected and used their own set of data.  Even when the district provided the data, sometimes the schools would do their own verification of the data  – but the changes were never sent back to the district.  Many times, the volunteers who run the school student directory would spend a significant amount of time collecting, organizing, and printing the student directory.

Q2. What changes are you proposing?
A2.  Earlier this year, we proposed the following to the school parent groups:  The district would create a custom report that utilizes the information from Infinite Campus to produce the student directories.  Schools would then be using the same exact information source and it would force us to go back into Campus to change the data as needed.

Q3.  Is this mandatory… can schools still make their own printed directories on their own if they wish?

A3.  For this coming school year, we will let schools chose to create their own student directories, but they must use an export file from Infinite Campus.

Q4.  Who actually provides the student directory reports and when will they be available?
A4.  The draft of the reports are available within Infinite Campus now – and any school administrator or office staff can run them.  They are located under STUDENT INFORMATION > REPORTS > and are labeled…

* Student Directory Listing –  provides an alphabetical listing of all students along with their homeroom section number (typically, you’ll see this as the back portion of the directory)

* Student Directory with Emails – a report that let’s you choose the homeroom, then run a formatted roster that includes parent email addresses.

* Student Directory without Emails – a report that removes the parent email addresses, as some schools print just the address and phone numbers.

Q5.  What about parents/students who want their names handled a certain way, how will that be handled?
A5.  For students, we use the nickname field – so if they want Billy instead of William, we just need to make sure that Billy is entered in the nickname field and it will override the First Name field.   For parents, we just need to make sure their names are listed correctly in Infinite Campus.

Q6. How about email addresses.. do parents have the ability to change what email address will be in the directory?
A6.  Yes.  This past year, Infinite Campus gave every person in Campus the ability to have a primary and secondary email addresses.  For the elementary student directories, we are using the primary email address field. Parents have access to control these fields within Campus – so they can make sure of which email address (or no email address) is published.

Q7.   Can we see a sample of the printed directory, so we can see what it would look like?
A7.  Yes, I can provide specific examples to school staff or to parent group members who are working on student directories (email Brian for more details).  For the general public, I can only provide a general overview, with the following graphics…

What our staff thinks of our district technology services… 2013 edition

Each year we conduct a satisfaction survey with our school district staff.  It’s a relatively short survey, and we’ve used many of the same questions multiple years in a row. Our goal is to track customer services.  For example, we don’t ask questions related to the latest gadget or gizmo… instead, we focus on fundamental customer service points –  as our belief is that quality customer service will always be needed regardless of the device.

View/Download the full staff survey results (pdf file)

Summary of the results…

Satisfied with response time and communications.

“The guys are great. They are helpful and in good spirits when they have to
come into my room. They never make me feel as though my questions are silly,
though they probably are. :)”

“Repairs are handled in a timely manner.”

“I also appreciate the new and innovative ideas presented at
professional development. I have worked in other districts before where the
technology department was somewhat a mystery – I very much appreciate the
transparency of the department in WDM and the efforts to move forward with
technology in a timely manner.”

Desire for more iPads at elementary level..

“Teachers should have more than 3 iPads.”

More training needed…

“We are way behind other districts. We need tech integrationists to help teachers
integrate tech. Jackie does a great job, but 1 person is not enough.”

“More WED collab day trainings. I think we are severely lacking those.”

“I would like to see more time given to the technology department during staff
development to share new ideas.”

NOTE FROM BRIAN:  In regards to Wed collaboration days, most collab. day topics are decided at your building level.  Talk to your building staff that oversee your Wed collab days, as we’d be glad to help you out!

Fair isn’t equal

“Bluntly, I don’t feel like access to technology is allocated in an appropriate
manner. However, I don’t feel like that is the technology dep’t’s fault. I really
think the board and TLS need to examine which schools are in the most need of
district contributed funds to purchase and update technology. We really need to
get out of this mindset that fair is equal.”

Access

“still not enough computers in our building. Much much better since we got a cart
for each team, but still hard to plan lessons if you don’t know if the devices will
be available”

More information about updates…

“Updating technology i.e. IC Revtrack, Paypal it would be nice to know what the updates are before we go in and find that something has changed.”

NOTE FROM BRIAN: We certainly agree that it would be great to have more knowledge of how the updates will impact, unfortunately, this isn’t always possible as we are reliant on what information is given by our vendors.  We also have a significant amount of our own customizations in things like Campus and RevTrak – that makes it hard for vendors to tell how their updates will impact our customizations.

Dedicated staff for K-6 technology integration

“Other surrounding districts have technology teachers for each building and are
implementing classes that teach technology skills to their young people. This
should not fall on the shoulders of regular classroom teachers.”

NOTES FROM BRIAN:  This concern has been raised over the past few years, however, it is significant to note that Waukee this past year moved away from this model and the elementary “tech teacher” is now dedicated towards training staff members how to integrate technology into the grade level classrooms.

How do the results compare to prior years?

How does the survey work?

All staff receive a short on-line survey. Each question is a positive statement such as, “When members of the district technology departments visit my building, they are courteous and treat the staff and students with respect.”   Users are asked to rate the statement as: Strongly Agree,   Agree,  Disagree,  Strongly Disagree, or  I don’t know.

For the summary charts below,  % Strongly Agree + % Agree =  Approval rating (which is the blue bars below).  In other words, we only count if they positively agree with a statement.  If we scored a 90% approval rating, that means 90% of the responses were Strongly Agree or Agree.

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For the charts above….

Overall = How we did based on all survey responses

Teachers = How we did based on classroom teacher responses only

Support = How we did based on support staff responses only