Meryl's Notes Blog

My independent school district is big on technology and added several new services this year. Kids hate it. Parents love it and sometimes hate it.

Meals

We’ve been able to add money to our kids’ lunch accounts for a few years now, but they switched services to one that charges a small fee and allows us to pay for other things. PayPams offers more features including the ability to see what our kids buy for lunch. This is an excellent example of outsourcing. It would cost the district more money to expand its application than to outsource the service to a business that offers more features.

Last year, a kid stole money out of my daughter’s lunch account and we had to call the cafeteria manager to get a list of things bought. There it was. Hard evidence. An order on a day she was absent. Previously, kids only needed three digits to pay for their lunches. That’s changed to six digits. Plus, if a kid “forgot” his code — he could look it up in the list and see other codes.

Grades and Absences

This is the part kids despise and parents love, but sometimes hate. Not long after school started, we saw our daughter got a low grade and asked her about it. She couldn’t believe we knew about it and we told her about the new grade viewing application. Of course, she wasn’t happy that we can ask her about any out of ordinary grades.

But the drawback is that we panic more often than before. A couple of times, she had a low grade — when it came time for report cards, she got a good grade. Knowing how she’s doing helps us help her. She’s fiercely independent and usually doesn’t like to ask for help. She can also see what tests and quizzes are coming up (if the teacher enters it ahead of time).

Report cards don’t come out for over a week after the reporting period ends. We don’t have to anxiously wait for it and there are no surprises. Parents can also set up the system to notify them when a grade for a class falls below a number of their choice. The application also sends emails with grades based on the parents’ preferences.

One time I discovered she had an unexcused absence by signing on to the grade viewer. It was my fault and I corrected it right away. No waiting for the report card with the unexcused absence marked.

PTA

All levels of the PTA have great resources online. Guides for officers, logos for use in newsletters and web sites, rules for contests and much more. I manage the web sites for two school PTAs and one council PTA.

I manage the Reflections contest for one school. The form and rules are posted on the school’s PTA web site — so no killing trees by leaving forms at school where the middle schoolers often take for doodling purposes. I left forms at school in the office plus I made small postcards with the web address and spread them throughout the school.

Sports

I can see how other school volleyball teams are doing. I knew about the web site, but thought there was no information on volleyball because the pages were blank. The coach confirmed that this was the place to go for scores. I didn’t dig deep enough (the site isn’t well designed — even Paul thought the same thing).

The site shows scores for all middle school and high school sports. The scores, however, depend on the coaches entering the information.

School District Information

Our local district sends an email newsletter and schools can create their own distribution lists for sending emails. My child’s middle school emails every Friday with the upcoming week’s events along with any news and announcements.

Volunteers must register every new school year because the district runs criminal checks. Volunteers could commit a crime any time between school years. Our district’s web site allows us to register online every year. We have to do one thing offline — have a form notarized for the school.

The district’s web site also provides a web page for each school so we can get email addresses, contact names and phone numbers, and links to the school’s official web page. We also access grades, absences, and meal accounts from the web site.

Our newsletter editor and volunteer hardly has to set foot outside her home to get the newsletter approved and copied. She emails a PDF version for approval and then emails it to the printer for printing and delivery.

School Cam

My youngest attends preschool and we can view his classroom as well as a couple of central rooms like the gym and playground. Parents can only access the room their children are in and not others. I love checking on him and watch him interact with other kids. Kids tend to behave differently around parents, so it’s great seeing how he is with other kids.

What technology have you seen schools use to help parents and children?

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