By Melanie Lekocevic
Capital Region Independent Media
RAVENA-COEYMANS-SELKIRK — New technology changes are coming to the RCS Central School District.
At the board of education’s Jan. 8 meeting, District Superintendent Dr. Brian Bailey announced that report cards for the middle and high schools will move to a digital format, but parents will have the opportunity to opt back in to paper report cards if they wish.
It’s a change many other districts made long ago, he said.
“Many schools in the area have used their student data management platforms to help disseminate student grades and progress,” Bailey said. “We have been one of the last holdouts in printing report cards and mailing them home, so you will start to see in the next month notifications to families that for 2024-25, we’re going to go to digital report cards at the secondary level. Any parent who would like to can opt back in to printed material.”
The change will not be implemented at the elementary school because of the way report cards are distributed at that level and the fact that those report cards are “very narrative in nature,” Bailey said.
Another technology change that is in the works for the district is a new platform designed to improve parent-teacher-district communication.
“We have already mentioned to staff about moving to Parent Square, which is a unified communication platform,” Bailey told the board of education. “It’s one that staff, when they use it, they can email, text message, make phone calls, send postings, share documents with families. There are other platforms that are being used throughout the district at various grade levels and classrooms. We want to try to unify that. For instance, if you have multiple children, if you’re in the portal, you can see all of your communications for all your children in one spot.”
The transition to Parent Square will be gradual as the district moves toward the transition. The change will impact how staff communicates with families, but for parents, things will mostly remain the same.
“On the parent end, it will look no different,” Bailey said. “You’ll still get text messages, emails and phone calls. The difference is the way the two-way communication can occur. All of the families will get an invitation to sign up for this and you can use it on your phone or on a computer. The ability to communicate back to the staff is much more robust.”
Families can expect to receive an email about Parent Square in February, when they will be able to register for the new system. In the meantime, staff will undergo training to learn how to use it.
“The response from the staff who have children in other districts who use it are like, ‘thank goodness,’ because it’s almost harder to find a school that isn’t using this platform than schools that are,” the superintendent said.
The rollout of the new platform will be slow and gradual and is designed to improve communication.
“In thinking about all of the conversations that we have had over the years about communication, this ability to have two-way communication is a very important component we’ve never been able to do with fidelity,” Bailey said.
VOLUNTEER FORUM
The district is working in conjunction with the town of Coeymans to host a public forum at the end of January, “Uniting and Empowering Our Community Through Volunteerism.” Increasing students’ opportunities to volunteer has been a goal for some time but was slowed down when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“For about five years, pre-pandemic, we started getting some energy toward creating volunteerism opportunities in our program, but of course some things helped to derail that and we thought it would be an appropriate time to try and re-spark that,” Bailey said.
The forum will be held Jan. 27, from 6:30-7:45 p.m., in the RCS High School library. Participants will share ideas, brainstorm and build connections, finding ways to volunteer in the community, from tutoring and environmental cleanups to helping local seniors, according to the district website.
Registration is required by Thursday, Jan. 23, on the district’s website, www.rcscsd.org.