Imagine getting quick online access to your child’s grades from home, seeing what assignments are missing or even checking to see whether your child made it to class OK and on time.

That kind of information could soon be available to parents under a major revamping of the student information databases kept at Lawrence’s public schools.

In the works is a plan to get all the school databases interacting and talking to each other, said Mike Eltschinger, the school district’s director of technology.

“The other thing that’s very important to us is to give some sort of Web access to parents – family access,” he said. “So a parent can get online and take a look at attendance, grades, lesson plans or lessons that they need to do. They get a lot more information.”

Eltschinger and members of his staff will talk to the school board Monday about a proposed new software package and what it would mean for district staff, teachers and parents.

The study session will begin at 5:30 p.m. Monday at the district’s Educational Support and Distribution Center, 110 McDonald Drive.

Talking to each other

The district currently relies on student management software at each building that was put in place in the mid-1990s.

“It has pretty much everything,” said Beryl New, assistant principal at Lawrence High School.

Lawrence High School Student Services counselor Linda Allen helps junior Megan Longanecker with her next semester's class schedule. The school board will look Monday at some new options on integrated information systems, which could include allowing teachers and parents to have Web access to grades and other information.

The software maintains information such as attendance, grades, previous discipline, testing history, health issues and emergency contacts, New said.

But the biggest complaints about the software is that the information databases aren’t integrated.

“They don’t talk to each other,” Eltschinger said. “If they need to get information from each other’s package, sometimes it’s difficult to do that. Sometimes it has to be done by hand.”

Ideally, the district would like to buy a software package that does everything.

“But we didn’t find the silver bullet, the package that does everything,” he said.

Instead, they found a system called “Skyward” that will allow them to do much of it. And they also have found a network that will work with Skyward and other software packages, he said.

Eltschinger didn’t have a final cost estimate available last week for Skyward and the other components in the new system.

However, about $1.5 million from the voter-approved $8.9 million technology bond issue was dedicated to updating software packages for student management, finance and human resources, he said.

Real-time access

Joan Stone, LHS registrar, was part of a districtwide committee that has been working with Eltschinger for about a year to look at products that would integrate student information on computers so they will not only be available to school staff but also to parents.

“The new system is going to give real-time access,” Stone said.

For example, those accessing the new system will be able to see whether a student made it to class that hour, or whether an assignment has been turned in, Stone said.

Parents also can get into the system with a personal identification number, such as what banks use, to update personal information about students, including emergency contact numbers and food allergies, she said.

For those working in the schools, they’ll be able to avoid entering the same information multiple times.

“When we have a new student coming in, it automatically also would make sure that the library system has the information they need, the food service would have information – without having to put it in two or three times,” Eltschinger said.

Grading made easier

Currently, schools have a grading software database, but that package doesn’t communicate with the student management database, Eltschinger said.

“So when the teacher finishes doing their grades, they have to manually enter the grades into the student management package,” he said.

In the Skyward package, when the teacher fills out grades and attendance, it automatically transfers to the other packages, he said.

Also, with Skyward, teachers will be able to access the grading program online to do everything at home that they could do at school, he said.

“They can go to a hot spot,” he said. “If they can get Web access, an Internet connection, they could do it there.”

They also hope to have more tools available for district administrators to see what’s happening overall in their buildings in terms of grades and attendance, he said.

SIF agents

Eltschinger said the board will also get a technical lesson about the network that will be used to go along with Skyward called SIF (Schools Interoperability Framework). SIF was initiated to create ways for school programs to communicate.

The network helps to create “SIF agents” for each computer software package. Those agents reside together on a common computer server so all the various packages can interact, Eltschinger said.

The board also will learn about Edustructures, a company the district is considering to build those SIF agents or sell the district tools to create them.

“It makes us more efficient in being able to manage the information that we have,” Eltschinger said. “If we can have all our software packages talk to each other efficiently, it will reduce the personnel needs within our departments and make us more efficient.

“In that case, it would save us money, time, and would allow greater information to flow more easily to teachers and administrators.”