By Jessie Rosenfeld
Staff Writer
The transfer of student information to Manhattan Beach Unified School District’s new student organization system PowerSchool slowed the Mira Costa registration process, according to Vice Principal Deborah Hofreiter for the 2013-14 school year.
The MBUSD organization system that arranges scheduling was switched to PowerSchool in August. Between Aug. 20 and 23, students had to change their schedules as a result of scheduling mistakes and conflicts that were not originally handled by PowerSchool.
“There are problems in schedules every year,” Principal Dr. Ben Dale said. “The fact that we were rolling in a new student information system made correcting it take longer.”
According to Hofreiter, when student data was put into PowerSchool from Aries, PowerSchool was unable to find mistakes in student schedules. Since mistakes could not be detected, there was an overload of students in some classes and some students had class periods missing.
“Scheduling issues are something that we need to address and not something we want to have usually, but I think next year is going to be a lot smoother” Hofreiter said.
According to Hofreiter, as many as ten Mira Costa staff members were on PowerSchool at the time manually imputing student schedule information, causing the computers to be slower and the scheduling process to be longer.
“Our priority is to make sure every student’s schedule allows them to have what they need,” guidance counselor Sue Bertran said. “We want students to have as many options as possible.”
To correct oversized classes, the administration asked for volunteers to switch out of large classes. However, because not enough students volunteered, the administration chose students randomly to switch.
“The decision was generally made after a conversation between myself and the head of that department,” Costa Vice Principal Ian Drummond said. “Any students that were switched out of a class were randomly chosen to move, but it would also have to work into their schedule.”
Next year, students will choose their classes off PowerSchool online, so PowerSchool will be able to decide on how classes should be arranged for each course to avoid scheduling conflicts.
“Once we get PowerSchool smoothly integrated into Manhattan Beach schools, it will be a much better system,” Hofreiter said. “You can look in one place for your attendance, grades, assignments, and schedule and all of it will be one log in.”
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