The Last of Manatee County Students Progress Reports Should Arrive Today

The final round of student progress reports should be coming home today after being delayed as the Manatee County School District switches its technology over to a new information technology system.

The school district used Connect Ed, its mass telephone messaging system, to inform parents that progress reports would be late as it switched its technology to allow the district to put all of the grades and attendance on one system.

The new system, called FOCUS, is designed to give more parents greater access to student information on a daily basis. But the transition to the new system has been slower and more painful than expected.

“There have definitely been challenges in transferring a large organization to a new system,” said Scott Martin, assistant superintendent for district support services.

One of those issues was discovered early in the school year after system crashed while teachers were all online at the same time to enter attendance.  Because the teachers all take attendance at a particular time of the day, everyone is logged into the system at the same time leading to a huge spike in use, Martin said. That caused the system to fail.

The district has purchased new processors to expand the system’s capacity so that it can accommodate a large number of users.

“The tech team has done a fantastic job of monitoring the load daily, “ Martin said.

He said he doesn’t expect the same loads to be put on the system at the end of the quarter when teachers are entering grades because those are typically entered at various times.

“Attendance seems to be the big thing where there is a large a spike,” he said.

Still those problems with the system prevented students’ progress reports from going out all at once. And if parents suspect any errors in things like attendance, they should contact their child's teacher immediately.

Parents who were used to monitoring students grades and assignments online, are also not able to do so during the first semester of school. The district got rid of Pinnacle, the $75,000 a year system it had been using. FOCUS offers expanded services allowing the district to put elementary students’ grades and assignments online.

The district told parents about the changes last spring and sent out brochures to many of those who were familiar with Pinnacle letting them know that the school was in the process of transitioning to a new system.

Martin said the plan is to have a “more robust” system for all of the record keeping the district does.  The district needed to get away from having several different software systems to help keep the records centralized and to save money for the district.

He said he doesn’t anticipate any delays in releasing report cards later in the quarter.  But, he added, the district is continuing to test the system.

“It’s going to be ongoing for us,” Martin said. “There are tests and monitoring of FOCUS every day. We’re also getting feedback from staff and ideas for improvements. We’re not contemplating an “it’s done” date. We’re contemplating improvements all along. “

Still, Martin said, the major issues have been addressed and he doesn’t forsee any major issues or challenges in the future.