SK parents will soon be able to track students’ graduation progress online

Published 8:54 am Thursday, April 30, 2009

South Kitsap School District parents and students have had access to attendance and progress reports online for more than a year.

In addition to that, SKSD director of information technology services Derry Lyons announced at Wednesday night’s school board meeting that they will be able to track the progress of graduation requirements online through Skyward beginning the next school year.

“Hopefully it will be available by the end of the first trimester for the high school,” Lyons said. “We’re still making sure the data is accurate.”

Attendance records and grades are available through Skyward for students at the three junior highs and South Kitsap High School. Lyons said many junior-high teachers show their students how to use the program at the beginning of the school year.

“The teachers want the students to take responsibility for looking up their own information,” Lyons said.

It’s a program that reads similar to the traditional paper progress reports with corresponding grades for each assignment. In addition to saving paper, Lyons said the program is beneficial because it’s more timely.

“I think the parents appreciate staying on top of what’s going on in the classroom,” he said. “That way they can catch things earlier instead of waiting until a piece of paper comes out later on.”

Lyons said parents can become involved with the program by contacting the main office where their child attends. Upon authorization, they are issued a login and password and then register an e-mail to communicate with a teacher.

If parents have multiple children, they only are required to register once.

Grades are available for any class, and Lyons said teachers are expected to update grades in “a professional and timely manner,” but notes that doesn’t always mean immediately because certain classes might be working on a long-term project.

• District superintendent Dave LaRose recently was selected as one of two winners of the Washington State Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development’s “Educating the Whole Child Award” for educators.

WSASCD noted that his “decidication, leadership and passion for embedding the ’whole child’ philosophy in numerous school programs“ according to a district news release.