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…
West Des Moines Community Schools Technology 