VOORHEESVILLE – A new student information system approved at last Monday’s school board meeting will help increase communication between parents and teachers, says the high school’s associate principal, Michael Paolino.

The system, eSchoolData, is web-based and will allow parents to access their children’s data on-line, using a designated password. The total annual cost for the system, server, and support is about $31,000; there are also one-time licensing and transfer costs totaling $21,000.

The meeting was Paolino’s last at Voorheesville; he has accepted a job as the principal of Guilderland High School.

Voorheesville currently uses a student information system called WinSchool. It has been in place since 1994, said Frank Faber, the chair of the high school’s business department, in a presentation he gave the board.
A student information system is "a digital database for school management," Faber said. It holds information such as attendance, student contact and health information, class lists, report cards, discipline records, state and national test scores, enrollment, and grade histories, he said.
WinSchool is an "in-house" system and can be accessed only by school staff, he said. It uses three separate databases for the different schools. "We export the data from the K to five database," he said of the elementary grades, kindergarten through fifth grade, "and import it to the six to eight database," Faber said of the middle school grades. "We do the same with students moving from eighth grade into ninth. We are hoping to have one database for K to 12 with eSchoolData," he told The Enterprise.

The WinSchool software is at the end of its life and will no longer be supported, Faber explained to the board last week.

The new eSchoolData system will be supported by Northeastern Regional Information Center (NERIC), and will have one database for the entire district.

The data is held on off-site servers, Faber said. A separate portal is used for access to the information as viewed from the web, and parents and teachers can access it from any web browser or operating system, said Faber.

With the new system, teachers will be able to establish a grade book that will be accessible on-line, allowing parents to view their child’s grades. The system will allow a teacher to enter a grading formula, with differing weights for homework versus tests and quizzes, Paolino explained.
"It is the most user-friendly for teachers at all levels," he said. "It is the best product at the best price," he said.

The annual costs for NERIC support for both systems is roughly the same— about $18,000. The new system has a yearly fee of $6,355 and an annual cost for the server of $6,700.

Faber told the board that the off-site server is less expensive than an on-site server. He estimated that implementing a server within the district would cost between $9,000 and $10,000.
In addition to the cost benefit, he said, "NERIC can serve and upgrade the server quickly." NERIC is responsible for backing up nightly, and maintaining the server around the clock, he said.

Licensing the new system and transferring data from one system to the other will cost about $21,000, Faber said, adding that it is a one-time cost.
"At this time, the new eSchoolData is a little more costly," Faber told The Enterprise. "The support cost is based on how many schools use a product. The more schools you can get using the same software, the support costs go down," he said. He anticipates more schools will soon be using eSchoolData as they drop WinSchool.

School board member Timothy Blow asked who would be administering the program.
"Frank would oversee everything," said Superintendent Linda Langevin of Faber. Within the district’s administration, though, she said, there will be different levels of privilege.
"ESchoolData is much more secure than WinSchool," Faber said, responding to Blow’s concern about the system’s security.

Faber plans to start transferring data out of WinSchool and into the new system in November and December, he said. He hopes that by July and August of 2008, the final rollover and training of staff will take place, and the WinSchool system can be archived, Faber told the board.

WinSchool is not being updated with any new features and is not producing reports required by the state in a timely fashion, Faber told The Enterprise. "The new system will help make life better at all levels — administration, teachers, and parents."

Other business

In other business at its Oct. 15 meeting, the school board:

– Accepted donations from the Voorheesville Community and School Foundation and the Voorheesville Parent Teacher Association totaling $14,000. Each group donated $5,000 to be used for the purchase of technology equipment for teacher and student use. The Parent Teacher Association also donated $4,000 to be used to purchase math manipulatives and classroom libraries;

– Heard from Richard Bingham, an auditor from Dorfman-Robbie Certified Public Accountants, who discussed the results of a recent state-required external audit for the 2006-07 financial year. The district’s internal controls had one deficiency, in regards to the preparation of full Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) financial statements, said Bingham. This essentially means that the district does not have its own certified public accountant on staff. Of the nine districts his firm audited, eight had the same deficiency, he said.
The district also needs to work to lower its school-lunch deficit, Bingham said. The district needs to "take steps to consider possible resolutions," he said.

The board accepted the audit report;

– Heard that the high-school student government had scheduled a blood drive on Oct. 23 open to the community, and those who donate will be entered into a drawing for an iPhone.

The amount of donations also impacts the monetary amount of a scholarship awarded to a graduating senior in June;

– Accepted the resignations of Mary Lynn Williams, a teaching assistant in the middle and high schools for more than 17 years; and James Hladun, the director of continuing education, who has 36 years with the district. Williams will retire on Feb. 25, 2008, and Hladun will retire on June 30, 2008.

The board also accepted Paolino’s resignation; his last day at Voorheesville was Oct. 22.
"We’re really going to miss you," said the board’s vice president, C. James Coffin, to Paolino.
"Mike, you have really proved yourself," said Superintendent Langevin.

The district has received 29 applications to fill the associate principal position, she said. The board should have the recommendation on two finalists by its Nov. 5 meeting, Langevin told The Enterprise.

The board will hold a special meeting on Saturday, Nov. 3 at 8 a.m. for the purpose of interviewing two or three candidates for the position, Langevin said this week.

Ed Diegel, who was the principal of Voorheesville Elementary School for 15 years, came out of retirement to fill in as associate principal until the post is filled.

The data coordinator aspect of Paolino’s job has been broken off from the duties of associate principal. Brian Stumbaugh, a high-school English teacher, was appointed to be the data coordinator for the middle school and high school, with an annual stipend of $4,800. Donna Fitzgerald, an elementary school resource room teacher, was appointed as the elementary school data coordinator, with an annual stipend of $3,200;

– Approved substitute teacher appointments for the 2007-08 school year provided by the Capital Region Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) substitute registry;

– Approved the contract with Wildwood School, which teaches special-needs students, for the period between Sept. 1, 2007 and June 30, 2008, at a cost of $40,097;

– Waived all facilities fees to support the 2008 Relay for Life Campaign and allow representatives to conduct business related to the campaign in cooperation with the middle- and high-school principal, the superintendent, and the board of education. The Relay for Life, an annual event to raise money to fight cancer, will provide a list of all information about the event;

– Heard from Michael Goyer, the district’s superintendent of operations, maintenance, and transportation, that he is looking for substitute bus drivers.
Goyer also said that the construction project, upgrading the elementary school and bus garage, is going "very well";
– Approved the first reading of a district policy regarding disclosure of wrongful conduct. Board member Timothy Blow cast the only vote opposing the policy. "This is limiting for no apparent reason," Blow said of the policy, which references only wrongful conduct associated with the school.
"We are not the policemen of everything people do," said David Gibson, the board’s president.
"I think we can still investigate for the best interest of the kids," said Blow.

Kathy Fiero, the president of the Voorheesville Teachers’ Association, asked how the board planned to inform the district staff about the policy.
"Any policy that directly affects employees goes out to all employees," said Langevin.
"This is not just about protecting district assets" It’s about protecting the students," said Gibson. "We have to be sure people know," he added; and

– Was presented with small gifts and certificates by Superintendent Langevin, thanking them for their hard work as school-board members.