New program keeps track of school absentees

By TINA ALLEN

VIEW STAFF WRITER

Penciling in who's absent and who's not in a role book is a thing of the past for Palo Verde High School teachers.

So are the days of keeping track of unexcused absences, suspensions, students who are not in class because of school activities and even those visiting the health office.

Instead, teachers are spending more time doing what they are paid to do -- teach.

It's all because of a computer program the school is using called SASIxp, said principal Therese Smith.

"There really isn't a lot of paperwork flying around that teachers have to read every day and go back to their role book and mark it," Smith said. "That was time consuming."

Now, the teachers merely key in the information on a classroom computer of who is in class each day and send the information on its way to the office staff, who do the rest.

"In a school where you have 2,700 to 3,000 students, you can imagine how many excused lists there are every day, how many require parent conference lists, how many kids are in the health office they need to be aware of, how many students are out on activities," Smith said. "They had to document all of that."

Palo Verde began using the program about three years ago and is the first in the district to take advantage of its elite features. Smith said next year they hope to extend its use by allowing parents to check on their children's attendance record via the Internet.

The program also is helping to keep school officials more aware of students who are missing too many classes, in a more timely manner. For example, school deans can access the information sent by teachers almost immediately, rather than wait for copies of attendance records to be reproduced at the end of the day.

Eventually, all schools in the Clark County School District will have the same capabilities, said Pam Hicks, area superintendent of outlying area schools. She is overseeing the transformation called the SMART project.

All 167 elementary schools in the district already have the SASIxp program in place as of August. Installation is underway in secondary schools and should be completed by the end of the year.

"It's just changing the way we've done business in the past," said Hicks, adding the old system was archaic and many of the records were kept on paper.

Using the program, the school district is able to keep a database of information on each student, including test scores, grades and attendance in a central office.

The technological upgrade is actually the result of a state mandate handed down about seven years ago, Hicks said. Legislators wanted to hold school districts in the state more accountable for the funds they received. The program, which has already been installed in all other Nevada school districts, is a faster, more efficient way to get the information there. What used to take weeks to compile, can now be sent electronically to the Nevada Department of Education.

School districts are required to send the Nevada Department of Education quarterly reports on students. The first from Clark County using SASIxp was 116,000 pages sent in October.

Hicks said the applications of SASIxp are numerous. For example, the program at the secondary level can help counselors pinpoint students who might qualify for certain college scholarships, based on specific data about the students.

"The ability for teachers to aggregate student data to help student achievement is going to be an improvement," Hicks said. "It's a tool we've not had before."