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Schools

New Portal Offers District 203 Parents, Students Infinite Possibilities

District 203's new student information system increases access, efficiencies.

Soon parents of students attending and will have even greater access to up-to-date information about their students.

On Sept. 6, the district will launch the Infinite Campus Parent Portal, a web-based system that replaces I-Parent. The district had used the previous student information system for 10 years, and it had become dated, officials said.

“We wanted to ensure we had a cutting-edge tool,” allowing access “anytime, anywhere,” said John David Son, director of instructional technology for the district.

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The first-year cost of the system is about $1 million, which includes purchasing the hardware, software and training. After the first year, the annual cost of Infinite Campus is $200,000.

The new system houses information including district schedules, attendance, grades, fees and report cards.

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“A lot of the basic foundational pieces that are required to operate the schools,” Son said.

In addition, the new system will allow the district to gather data to generate state reports, he said.

Parents will have access to the same information as they did with I-Parent, including attendance, schedules, grades and assignment lists. Infinite Campus will also provide access to fees, transportation, health information, teacher newsletters, school notices and a family calendar.

“If they have multiple children, on the calendar they should be able to see all the assignments come up on a single dashboard view,” Son said.

The new portal will also allow parents to update contact information.

“In the old system if a parent changed an e-mail address or phone number, they would have to call the school and someone would have to change it in the system,” Son said. “Now, they can actually do it themselves. That’s a big selling point for us.”

Another new feature, which will be available for high school students starting Oct. 1, is Grad Planner. This will allow students and parents to track how many credits the students need in each subject area in order to graduate, Son said.

Eventually, the system will allow freshmen, sophomores and juniors to log in and select their classes for the following year.

“It really saves a lot of work for our staff by allowing students to do so,” Son said. “Previously, students would turn in a handwritten form. Then that data would have to be manually entered into the system by someone on the support staff.”

To access the Infinite Campus Portal, parents will receive an instruction letter with an access key that can be used to create a user name and password. The letters will be distributed at school open houses. Those letters that are not picked up will be mailed to the students’ homes.

The process to select the system began about two years ago, with officials searching for the system that was best able to meet the district’s needs.

“The selection was just a little over a year ago in the spring of 2010,” Son said.

For the past 15 months, the district has been implementing the new system, and converting data from the old system into the new one.

With Infinite Campus up and running a key element is in place allowing the district to make future improvements, he said. “It really begins to lay the foundation for us as we look to enhance the other systems across the district.”

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