Tehachapi News

PowerSchool puts parents in the classroom

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Don’t bother hiding that low test score. Mom and dad already know about it.

Tehachapi High School students’ grades, attendance and even weekly assignments are now available for their parents to view through a Web-based program called PowerSchool, which gives parents of all 1,520 students online access to just about everything going on in the classroom.

Parents can sign up for e-mail notifications — sent from teachers directly — regarding their children’s progress. They have the option of receiving teacher e-mails once a month, every other week, once a week or even once per day.

The program was introduced to parents and students on THS back-to-school night Thursday, Sept. 3.

THS Principal Cary Johnson said all teachers have uploaded at least attendance records on their PowerSchool sites. He said he expected every teacher to soon participate fully in the PowerSchool program, which includes posting future assignments and notes on in-classroom behavior.

“Teachers are still adjusting,” Johnson said while showing a group of parents how to access the PowerSchool site in the THS computer lab. “We are sort of in a transition phase.”

Parents, and soon students, can access PowerSchool from their home computers via a “confidential Web I.D.” and password, handed out to parents on Back-to-School Night. Johnson said students would be given their login information in the classroom in the near future.

“I think it’s good, because we try to stay pretty active,” said James Boyd, father of two THS students. “We’re constantly asking, “Where’s your homework? Where’s your homework?’”

Boyd said although he's never felt his children have hidden poor grades from him, he said he liked that PowerSchool allowed him to “intervene” if their grades started to drop.

“If you wait until progress reports come out about the middle of the quarter, it’s too late,” he said.

Boyd said he used to have a habit of constantly e-mailing teachers, trying to find out whatever he could about his children’s performance.

“Now, I don’t have to do that,” he said.

In addition to keeping tabs on homework and tardiness, parents and students can now also register for classes online. In the past, every course registration request had to be hand-written, hand-delivered and recorded, by hand, into the school’s system.

THS sophomore Chris Counihan said he liked the PowerSchool program.

“If you forget your homework, you can look it up online,” he said.

And what if his parents logged on and saw he had received a “D” or an “F?”

“I’m not concerned,” Counihan said. “If I’m failing, they should know. This should motivate me.”

Principal Johnson said PowerSchool is “read-access only” — parents and students can only view the data, not change it.

The program also includes a function called “Balance Alert,” which notifies parents of any outstanding charges.

Johnson gave presentations to about 50 parents and students during the evening, and said he may hold more in the future if problems in the system arise.

Parents did have to confront one minor flaw with PowerSchool, though, on back-to-school night.

Instruction sheets handed out to parents erroneously included the “www.” preceding the Web site’s URL address.

PowerSchool’s Web address is powerschool.teh.k12.ca.us/public/home.html.

The program will also be unveiled at three other Tehachapi schools: Jacobsen Middle School (Sept. 9), Golden Hills Elementary (Sept. 10) and Monroe High School (Sept. 5-9).