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Holy Family piloting new student info system

The Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division is one of 13 school divisions in Saskatchewan that is piloting MySchoolSask (MSS), the new provincial student information system.
Holy Family board

The Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division is one of 13 school divisions in Saskatchewan that is piloting MySchoolSask (MSS), the new provincial student information system.

The MSS system is replacing the information systems that were in place individually by school divisions, such as the Maplewood system that Holy Family has been using for the last number of years, with the view of having one uniform student information system for the entire province.

The Holy Family board of trustees heard a presentation and saw a live demonstration of how the new system works from Terry Jordens, who headed up the school division’s team to learn the intricacies of the system and get it set up.

MSS is mainly for student information, and includes demographics, classes, grades, report cards, attendance and contact info for each student, along with compiling staff and school information.

One of the reasons Holy Family is able to take on this pilot program is they do not have any high schools, which eliminates many of the complex aspects of a student information system, such as the grading system used in high school and transmitting transcripts to post-secondary institutions, Jordens explained.

This was one of the reasons a number of school divisions decided against taking part in the MSS system this year. The Southeast Cornerstone School Division is not running the MSS system.

“Overall, it’s better for the education system as a province to have alignment. Student records will move easier between school divisions. Parents benefit as they only have to access one system to get information on their child, and teachers benefit as they can see what their students data is, what their reading level is, instead of waiting for that information to come,” said Jordens, adding that Holy Family realized the Maplewood system is old and in need of replacement.

The new MSS system went online on Aug. 12, and is now in place for all student data for Holy Family schools, said Jordens.

The MSS team for the division is setting up the grading and report cards in September and October, and will do three full days of training with administrative assistants, including one day with the consultant. Principals will get monthly updates and will have some training, then teachers had a half-day of training as they prepared for school startup, and will have another half-day in October on gradebook (which is mark gathering) and report cards, with the goal to have digital report cards this year.

The new report cards have not yet been fully developed yet, with the ministry of Education involved with the process, and they are supposed to be ready by around Oct. 1, with the first report cards due to come out on Nov. 15.

“The grading philosophy is not changing, just the look of it will be different,” said Jordens.

Asked if there will be hard-copy report cards any more, Jordens said there won’t be, but parents will be able to log onto a website and see a pdf of the report card marks. They can print it out if they want, or if they are unable to, they can have the school office do it.

Attendance-taking is “very usable” right now, said Jordens, noting that because Holy Family is only one of 13 divisions piloting it, there will be lots of support and help from the ministry level as they go along, if any glitches appear.

As she views this new system, she said, “The database has the capacity for many functions. We’ll continue to grow into the program.”

There are some challenges, said Jordens, but “overall, the benefits far outweigh the kinks.”

There was need for a lot of work on the program over the summer to get it in place for the startup of the school year, and one challenge that has arisen is that the system Holy Family uses for its school libraries is not part of the MSS system. The result, said Jordens, is they will have to continue with a version of the Maplewood program for the libraries so they can continue to be accessible this year.

Meantime, Holy Family is looking into transitioning to the Destiny program for libraries, as about one-third of other school divisions use it in the province.

“It’s nice to be on the cutting edge on this,” said Gwen Keith, education director, who pointed out that Holy Family will continue to use their own standards of grading.

Asked if there were any security concerns with this new system, Lynn Colquhoun pointed out that Holy Family’s IT risk has been downgraded by going on this new system, and said the school division was more at risk while using the Maplewood system than they are using the MSS system.

“It’s kind of exciting, because there was a lot of angst about this system,” said trustee Jerome Sidloski. “We were a little bit stressed about that.”

Jordens noted that the ministry staff have been very helpful with this system, and added, “They have a real drive to get it working.”