Another summer has just about come and gone and the Tracy Unified School District is already heading back to school on Monday, August 6.
For the first time, the district, made up of 16,000 students, is switching over to the Aeries Parent Portal for registration in the 2018-2019 school year. In the changeover, each parent must go through the process of re-registering their student online.
“Re-registration means going into their parent portal and updating their contact information, contact page, medical history, and it’s all information that we need on the first day of school,” Tom Quiambao, Director of Technology for the Tracy Unified School District said. “They will also in that portal, acknowledge the emergency form which is really what schools need on their first day.”
District officials say this will replace the “first day packet” full of paperwork that students usually come home with after the first day of school and streamline the process, ultimately saving the district money in the long run.
“They put a packet together that is sometimes 15, 20 pages long, staple them, send them home, mail them. So if you equate the cost, manpower cost, paper cost, printing cost, it’s a lot. So by going online, not only do we streamline the process, but we save taxpayer dollars,” Quiambao said.
Parents have been given a year’s notice to get signed up, but there are still a handful of families that have put it off until the last minute. They are being asked to go online and fill out the Aeries data confirmation through the parent portal.
Once parents get logged in to do their data confirmation, beginning at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, they will get to see their child’s teacher online. This year, because of security reasons, the child’s name will not be publicly posted with their classroom assignment. That information can only be found after logging into the parent portal.
The parent portal is also tool for parents to view their child’s grades, attendance, schedules and all of the information you need to know about your child’s activity on a daily basis.
“We went into online registration for two things: We’re trying to save and cut down paper. We’re trying to go green. Not only that, we’re trying to streamline the process of re-registration,” Quiambao said.
For the families in the TUSD that are not computer literate, the district is ready to help with extra computers.
“We’re opening up our computer lab...We have tablets available for them and this is not just for this purpose, this is year-long open ready for every parent that comes in,” he said. “We have bilingual office staff. They were trained on how to guide parents. Parent liaisons are also available. They know how the system works.”
Even if a parent shows up to the first day of school without re-registering their child, schools will have extra staff on duty to help guide them through the process at their computer labs.
“So my thought is, not only are we exposing the parents to technology, we’re in fact teaching parents how to use the technology at the same time,” he said.
Part of the process means parents will have to re-register for class every year, in order to keep their information up-to-date, pay student fines and sign off on annual paperwork. Parents have until midnight on Sunday to finish their data confirmation on the parent portal before the first day of school.
“This will certainly make your life easier on day one school. You don’t have to line up. You don’t have to wait in long lines just to figure out who your teacher is and what room you’re going to. Please go online and do data confirmation,” he said.
Continue the conversation with Lena on Facebook.