Parents will soon be able to check on their student’s grades and attendance through the World Wide Web once again.
Infinite Campus was chosen to replace Edline because of an obsolete data records system, which Troup was the last system to utilize, chief financial officer Don Miller said.
Because Edline wasn’t going to be supported with updates, “We were going to end up paying thousands of dollars a year to keep it up to speed,” he said. “So that’s a change we had to make.”
Since March, Miller and his team of registrars has worked to convert all student files, grade files, attendance records and nearly everything else under the educational sun for use with the new grade book.
The transition is almost complete, Miller said, and teachers have begun switching to the new program since the start of school. Once all middle- and high school teachers and administrators are up and running, the school system will begin internal testing on Infinite Campus’ parent portal.
Working out the kinks in the program, however, will take a little longer.
“It is no small feat to transition data for some 12,000 students and 2,000 staff members, but we are nearing the end of the process,” he said.
Miller and his crew are aiming for a start date of Sept. 30.
“Right now the grade book - it’s still a learning experience,” he said.
Once all testing is complete, the school system will begin handing out passwords and IDs to parents for the portal. Training also will be provided in an attempt to get more parents to make the Web site as regular a trip as Google, keeping them in the know on their child’s grades, homework assignments and attendance.
“We know parents were avid users of Edline as a communications tool be-tween the school and home,” said Tonia Contorno, director of high school curriculum at Troup County schools. “We hope to see even greater use of the new parent portal.
Starting in January, the school system is planning to explore use of the program for elementary students and parents, and officials expect to complete the study by June.
The Board of Education originally voted on the new program June 2008, approving a purchase order of $96,000 to K-12 Solutions Group of Commerce. In November, the board approved an order of about $138,000 for an annual service agreement with the company.
The system worked those funds off installing it.
“In the old system, we had maybe a couple of hundred people involved in working with the system,” Miller said. “… Probably just about every person in the system is touching this program now, so we went from a few hundred to 2,000.
“I said that it would be a big project, but I was wrong. It’s a monstrous project.”
Until the system is up and running, parents were told to keep up to date on their children’s progress by direct communication with teachers through e-mail, parent conferences and phone calls.
Trey Wood can be reached at twood@lagrangenews. com or (706) 884-7311, Ext. 228.
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