WHS’s recent transition from Infinite Campus to PowerSchool has left faculty and students divided in their opinions on the change, with some preferring the new student information system and others feeling less enthusiastic. The adjustment to PowerSchool’s new features have been the main point of controversy, especially in the beginning month and a half of school.
PowerSchool was chosen as the replacement for Infinite Campus because the mindset and goals of the company better fit WHS’s needs.
“[PowerSchool is] flexible and capable, without needing super customization,” said Micheal Sanford, WHS technology integration specialist. “[It was chosen] to take advantage of the latest and greatest enhancements, to work with a bigger company that has a better philosophy around usability, and to improve end results as compared to Infinite Campus.”
Despite these advantages, many students and faculty members experienced some technical difficulties when they first tried to use PowerSchool.
“I looked at my schedule and it was all weird. It said that I had two bio classes on the same day, two hours each, and there’s many other technical issues,” senior Austin Marill said.
For teachers, the early days of using PowerSchool involved some challenges with accessing information about their students.
“Teachers’ [inability] to access information about their students has been challenging. IEPs, 504s, even figuring out their guidance [counselor]. Those are all things that have been hard to find,” said history teacher Angela Lee.
Other teachers have struggled with the basic tasks they have to complete using PowerSchool.
“I have found it challenging to use the new program. It has taken me quite an effort to build my class list, to get my attendance together and things like that,” said Mitch Finnegan, a health education teacher. “So in general, I’m a little slow on the learning curve.”
PowerSchool also presents the eight-day rotation schedule in a way that many find confusing.
“It doesn’t work well with our schedule because it doesn’t [visually] rotate the same way.” said Steve Boardman, physics and engineering teacher. “Blocks will be labelled [A through E], but A doesn’t mean A Block. It means the first block of the day.”
With all of these challenges, some teachers believe that the adjustment period for PowerSchool could span the whole school year.
“I think I’ll learn more as more problems are uncovered,” said Boardman. “For example, I’m not going to know about semester related things until the [end of the] semester comes up, and I’m not going to know about end of the year [issues] until the end of year comes up.”
In contrast, some students enjoy new features that PowerSchool offers compared to Infinite Campus.
“I do like that there is an event calendar on PowerSchool,” said junior Riley-Kate Andrasco. “It’s like a reservation where teachers can input events. For example, today, I have a wind ensemble performance, and it notifies me that I have an early dismissal.”
The faculty was offered training on using PowerSchool over the summer at workshops run by experts of PowerSchool and Weston’s IT staff. For teachers that were not able to come to the summer training, the training was provided during the teacher prep days that took place over the week before students returned to WHS.
“There were several hours every day that we were here doing the training, but I didn’t feel like that was adequate for me,” said Finnegan.“I wish we had been able to do some of the training last spring because a lot of us do a lot of our class prep work over the summer.”
The process of customizing and adjusting to PowerSchool is a multistep process that comes in phases.
“Much of what we are doing right now is getting users up to speed on PowerSchool,” said Sanford. “As we do that we learn how the users have used student information systems in the past, and we can often modify the system features to match what the users need.”
While teachers are receiving this training and support, many students question if the amount of information released about PowerSchool was sufficient for students.
“The school should have done a better job at telling us how to use PowerSchool effectively, like navigating our schedules and setting the notifications,” said Marill.
Faculty members believe that having more support in this adjustment period, both in the development of PowerSchool for WHS and information about how to use PowerSchool is vital for the success of students and faculty.
“We definitely do need more time to adjust to it,” said Laura Skinner, an intern in the guidance department and WHS bookkeeper. “We also need more support on the student and the staff end of just making sure that everyone is feeling comfortable with the system.”
