East needs to move into the 21st century and utilize technology

East has come a long way in embracing the 21st century’s technology boom. Moving from an age of hand-kept grades and attendance, East has pushed to find resources for saving paper, time and, most importantly, money. Almost all of the teachers provide the homework for the day online, as well as providing links to the online version of their textbook. A student’s GPA ad class rank are available even before the report cards get home through the student’s online “Graduation Worksheet.” The SMSD Web site, while a little outdated, provides several online research links that the school has paid for the ability to use.

However, there is still much that could be done to make several aspects of high school more efficient. With more electronic involvement, receptionists, counselors, teachers, and students would have more time to pursue what’s actually important: the development of students to prepare them for life after high school. The following things could be accomplished to push into the next generation of technology:

1. Attendance. The school deals with an average of 175 sick or absent students a day, according to receptionist Elaine Paepke. All of these absences are confirmed by note or by parental phone call. In order to save the receptionist’s time, all “sick notes” could be moved to filling out an online “Absence Alert” form.

While one might argue foregoing signatures increases the school’s liability, procedures could be put in place that would actually make the procedure more secure. By developing a program to send a “confirm” e-mail to parents after an “Absence Alert” form is filled out, skipping would be much harder than merely scribbling down a fake signature on the way to school. By asking for parent’s e-mail at the beginning of the year (and reminding them to change their password), parents could be in the know of their student’s location.

Some parents don’t use the internet very frequently or do not have a computer. These parents would be able to opt out and phone in any absences; however, the majority that do use the internet and e-mail shouldn’t be limited by the minority who would still prefer to use the phone or a note.

2. Enrollment. Like it is done at most universities, enrollment could be moved online. With this, counselors could spend less time manually inputting the student’s cell phone number and “Alternate Class #3.” With that time, they could  discuss with that student what classes will help them the most in their future.

East could invest in a program and implement it almost immediately. One program, called eClassTrack, is a web-based program that lets students register for classes and pay fees online. It even sends the confirmation e-mail to students after filling out the registration. For those that don’t want to deal with the Web, the program allows for “quick and easy data entry for mail-in and walk-in registrations by administrative staff.”

After the students confirm their schedule with counselors, the counselors could then ask for a parent signature of the final schedule. Although they would have to check in with English classes twice instead of once, losing the manual input process would save weeks that could be spent discussing class choice selections with students.

3. Eligibility cards. The cards, which are used for teachers to let coaches know if a student-athlete is currently not passing a class, could also be done electronically, although with provisions. According to Athletic Director Jim Ricker, the school has considered electronic eligibility cards, but decided that the face-to-face contact between a failing student and his teacher were an important part of the process; the student would find out the failing from their coach instead of their teacher.

The board agrees with this notion. However, there are ways to keep the face-to-face contact of the failing student while still saving teachers the minutes at the end of each class used for checking grades and signing the cards.

For example, teachers could submit grades, with comments about the student’s behavior, on the first day of the week. Because most eligibility cards are due on Friday, teachers would have time to speak to students that have grade or behavior related issues and sort them out as needed. By letting teachers quickly submit the grades of students who are passing and in good standing, it would even give more time for them to discuss grades with failing students.

4. Seminar passes. While some of these ideas promote efficiency, a seminar pass program would increase security by limiting students from filling out a fake form and sneaking out of the school.

The program would work like this: In order to get into a seminar, a student must ask their teacher to put them on his or her “list.” For example, a teacher could make the list of all students she has allowed to go to seminar A, B, or both. Before seminar starts, this list is tabulated and e-mailed to all teachers. Each teacher would receive an e-mail of where all the students in their seminar class has been permitted to go. With this, no student would be able to forge a signature and sneak out, and no teacher would have to waste time signing multiple hall passes or wondering if they have enough room in their seminar A.

With these additions, the school could be running in a state of high efficiency and low liability.  When East students graduate, they will be going into a world full of e-mailing and internet forms; embracing it as soon as possible only adds to their real world experience. The shift from phone calls and scribbled notes to internet forms might be difficult, but in the board’s opinion, the school should embrace the inevitable as soon as possible.