Opening the Portal – Walpole Public School District's Success

USR06

Lynn Rowan, Software Support SpecialistWalpole Public Schools

Agenda • Goals and Benefits• Overview of the portal• Planning and preparation• Implementation:• Setup• Communication

• Portal maintenance• Best practices • Help• Q & A

Original Goals

• Provide tool for student achievement

• Increase home-school communication to more fully engage families

• Change from scheduled progress reports to ongoing communications

Added Benefits

• Parent conferences become much more productive and substantive

• User validation of student data

• Consistent grade reporting

• Transparency in our record-keeping

• Production and mailing costs cut substantially

Overview of Family Portal•Home tab:

-Class and school announcements

-Recent activity•Family tab:

- Demographics- Attendance- Conduct- Transcript- Schedule- Online course

requests

- Transactions- Notifications

Overview of Portal Tabs

Academics tab:•Details (Grades)•Assignments•Attendance

Reports:•Report cards•Schedules•Transcript

Overview of Portal Tabs

Activities tab:•Details•Members•Events

Calendar tab:•Preferences

Planning the Roll-Out• Communicate with district administrators to

set goals and timelines.

• Determine:o Features o Schoolso Users

• Establish/communicate gradebook grade reporting standards with staff.

• Identify support staff.

Preparation• Contacts:– Clean up; delete where possible, merge

where needed.

• Communication:– Draft Family portal letter.– Craft student account logon letter.– Create Web resources for users.

• Develop training plan:– How will families be trained?– What training is needed for teachers/staff?

Implementation: Account Setup

• Create families – use last name and address.

• Create student accounts:o Custom login expression used to match to school

network login.o Expiration dates used to identify school.

• Create family accounts for emergency priority 1 contacts.

Implementation: Communication

• Family portal letter distributed.

• Logon page link added at district and school level.

• Directions for login and report printing posted on Web sites.

• Set up hands-on workshop at open houses, parent conferences.

Family Portal Maintenance

• Ongoing support for families, students, teachers

• Ongoing updates to family members

• Customize templates and reports for portal

• Add new users/delete exited as needed

• Create co-custodial parents accounts as requested

Best Practices

• Central student registration

• Training around standardized data entry

• Emphasize transparency of data to all staff (i.e., conduct referrals, student names)

• Use ability to hide features until they are test-driven and consistent (i.e., conduct)

The X2 listserve: x2users@stephenpmurphy.com

Feel free to contact me with questions at:lrowan@walpole.k12.ma.us

Help is available…

Questions & Answers

Thank you.

lrowan@walpole.k12.ma.us