RENOVO -A nagging, yearly headache of a problem has grown to migraine proportions accompanying the advent of a new student management system software in Keystone Central School District.
A complaint by one area resident, who said the difficulty and delays in obtaining school transcripts have placed his daughter's college applications at risk of being rejected as tardy, started a rolling conversation about the issue.
"This has been an ongoing problem for years," board member Jeff Snyder said. "This has to stop. I don't understand how we can have this over and over again."
Other board members mentioned receiving telephone calls and learning that the change-over to a new computer system is, at least in part, a contributor to the woes this year.
Superintendent Kelly Hastings said a variety of factors came into play in this year's delay, but pointed to files located at three different high schools, a required upgrade to the information system and the confusion sparked by attempts to match categories at local and state levels as the culprits.
"We are working on this," she said. "Currently, some of the updates require a laborious hand entry of the data because of the unsimilar categories when the state and local systems are compared."
With 1,400 students in the system, and a new system in play, Curriculum Director Terry Murty said some problems were only too likely to crop up.
Most of the board members offered a strong suggestion the administrators take every effort to clear up the backlog in updates and provide information to students and parents in a timely manner.
Hastings said the new student management system software will eventually result in improvements to scheduling, grading and accountability.
The effort was made necessary by upgrades at the state level and the need to coordinate information gathering with those efforts, Hastings said.
The final outcome will draw from local records, matching them with certification of teachers and course descriptions to insure that educators are qualified to teach the courses they are assigned.
