Out With Progressbook, In With Skyward

The grading scale has not changed in twenty years.  Instead of changing the grading scale, the school is changing the online grade book.  The school board will implement this change at the start of the next school year.  Staff and teachers have already begun online training and teacher trainers will participate in sessions this summer to learn more.  The new grading program will be Skyward.  

“I would say in the winter months, there were a group of representatives from elementary, junior high and high school as well as central administration that were put together to look at potential programs that we were looking to purchase to update the student record system. That group of folks then looked at three different companies and their presentations from them and saw the capabilities of what they were able to do. They graded them and made recommendations from that on which company that they felt was best for the school district,” Principal Lori Mangan said.

In January 2016, the school board decided that the online grade book would possibly be changed by next year.

“The ultimate final decision when the school board agreed to purchasing the new software, I believe, occurred in about January,”  Mangan said.

Since then, there have been many training sessions to prepare administrators for the new grade book system.

“We have started the initial training process with that. There are many training sessions that have happened with certain groups as it relates to scheduling because that will be a major part of it as well,” Mangan said.

Not only is there training of the staff, but there is also online training having to do with the website itself.

“All of the secretarial staff and administration at the elementary schools as well as the junior and senior high school have gone through that online training.  The first big wave of things that are going to be implemented is that scheduling process,” Mangan said.

Although the school’s online grade book will change soon, the scale in which grades are named (A is a 92.5 to 100, B is 85.5 to 92.49 and so on) will not change any time soon.

“We are not changing the grade system, so to speak, which is a school board policy, so therefore what you need to have for an A and the ranges with those, as a ninety-three to one hundred percent, that will stay the same and what a B is, and so forth.  So there are no changes that are going to be made in the grading system itself just to how we’re managing putting in grades and giving that information out to students’ parents,” Mangan said.