Darlington school district parents have new technology to access student information

DARLINGTON — Darlington County School District Director of Technology Diane Sigmon presented school board members with the newest tool available to improve communication with parents during the Darlington County Board of Education regular meeting Monday.

The PowerSchool Parent Portal gives parents throughout the district online access to their children’s schedules, grades, attendance records and school bulletins from the beginning of the school year. It also provides parents with a free e-mail address where updates can be sent daily, weekly or monthly.

“This is a powerful tool for parents to see grades and attendance anytime you want to,” Superintendent Dr. Rainey Knight said.

The system is integrated with the software already used by teachers to input grades. Parents will be able to see grades as they are posted along with any teacher comments written in the grade books.

“There’s not a duplication of effort on the teacher’s part,” Knight said. “They will have to keep these up in a timely manner. When those grades are entered is when you’ll see them.”

Teachers will also be able to add future assignments in their grade books, too.

“I can see teacher comments,” Sigmon said. “I can click on a teacher’s name to send a question or comment.”

Parents can also e-mail to request or schedule a conference.

“I love the communication piece, the conversations parents and teachers will begin to have,” Sigmon said.

She added it may always foster more conversations at home between the student and the parent.

“There are also tools on the other side to allow principals to monitor teacher grade books and last updates,” Sigmon said.

While some board members were concerned that a flood of curious parental e-mails may inundate teachers, Knight said e-mail traffic may pick up at first but teachers are always encouraged to set up conferences with parents to discuss sensitive or complicated matters.

“Teachers will have to be pretty punctual,” board member Charles Govan said.

Knight said daily work and non-essay tests should be graded and entered within a week anyway.

“It even may help teachers plan to spread out tests and not do them all at the end of the quarter,” board member Dr. Allen McCutcheon said.

For more tech-savvy parents, the school calendars can be uploaded through ICal or on a smart phone.

“The ‘My calendar’ feature will allow me to subscribe to class assignments or assignments with scores and grades,” Sigmon said. “Every time a teacher adds a grade, it will post something on my calendar. It also allows it to sync with my calendar.”

Additional features will be added by the end of the year as well, including a way to check on lunch balances.

“We’re working on phasing in a balance alert too, so parents can look at lunch balances,” Sigmon said.

During registration, parents will be given a blue card with login information, the username and password for each child and a schedule of dates to expect progress reports. That user name and password are directly connected to the child. Anybody who has that information will have access to that account, so parents can distribute that information to extended family members or grandparents if needed.

“Right now, we have a separate user name and password for each child,” Sigmon said.

Schools can print extra copies of that user name and password for a parent who loses the blue card. The information will only be provided to parents or legal guardians, and procedures to ensure that will be drafted soon.

“Some parents don’t have computers or e-mails, so we’ll need to develop procedures to provide hands on support,” Sigmon said.

During registration at high school computer labs and at some elementary schools, parents will be able to test their login and see how the program works.

“We’re going to train to have a guru at each school,” Sigmon said.

In August, the district also plans to schedule training sessions at the four Darlington County libraries and at Walmart.