In an attempt to cut down on false attendance reports, starting Dec. 9, Park implemented a new attendance system designed by assistant principal Evelyn Lashley. This method allows a student’s parent to email [email protected] to excuse an absence. The request must come from the parent’s email listed in PowerSchool to be accepted. While the attendance phone line is still available, this new system is replacing the Google Form used in the past.
Assistant principal Evelyn Lashley said the new reporting method has been working well so far, and the tech tools from Google allow for easy implementation.
“Parents have already been using it and it’s been pretty slick. Another thing that is cool (is that) it’s through Google Groups ‘collaborative inbox.’ So it’s an email from the family, but it goes to a collaborative inbox, meaning that multiple adults at the school can have access to that email inbox,” Lashley said. “So it’s not just going to one person. For example, if they were just emailing Mary (Strouts) and she’s on vacation, then she’s going to have her auto-reply. But with a collaborative inbox, you can add different staff people that can have access to seeing that — there’s always a way that people can be accessing those emails coming in from families.”
According to office staff member Mary Strouts, the new email system recording who sent the emails makes attendance reporting an easier process. She said this makes it more secure, and parents now have more control over submitting the attendance communication themselves.
“I just calculated, today I got 89 voicemails and 63 emails from people. Daily it’s usually somewhere between 120-200 people a day for attendance,” Strouts said. “There’s no AI, it’s just me. I look to see who is submitting it and if it looks like it’s not a parent email then I’ll look it up. Before, you could just type in what the email was, and this actually just records who sent the email.”
Park parent Robin Estrin said she predicts the email method will lessen student freedom in self-excusing absences. She said using this new method adds more security.
“It will be more secure knowing that it has to be matched to parent email, and you’re more likely to get people to do it if it’s fast because people are on their email all the time, versus having the time to sit and go somewhere private to make the phone call. You can do a talk-to-text too; you could do it while you’re driving and tell your phone to send an email to the (email) address,” Estrin said. “Anyone could fill out the Google Form. Any student who felt like it could lie and say whoever they wanted to be and fill it out so it’s just a little bit more secure.”
According to Lashley, this plan is going to give families the option to continue using the phone line. She said the administration is always available for problem solving, but she thinks that the new system will be a permanent solution.
“The plan is that this is the new way of doing it, instead of replacing the form completely. Ongoing families will have the option of the phone line or the email address if something comes up, or we’re getting data that there’s an issue. We’re always open to problem-solving things as they come up,” Lashley said. “My opinion is that the goal of this rollout is that this is a new, permanent solution for gathering attendance and excused absences,”
According to Estrin, she enjoys the new method and it saves a lot of time as opposed to using the phone line.
“It is so much quicker because it only takes however long it takes to write a one-sentence email. Versus time it used to take to dial in, wait for the message, push the right prompt, leave your message,” Estrin said. “So, that was a few minutes versus a few seconds — it saves a lot of time.”
Strouts said the email method was put into place to mirror other schools in the district that are already using this method.
“This method was put into place to both create continuity with the other schools in the district because they all use an email address to be able to excuse students. Then two, Google forms have some restrictions on how they can be recorded of who’s submitting it and whatnot,” Strouts said. “It’s just more of a simplicity of being able to give parents an easier access because most everybody has email rather than not trying to figure out how to submit to a Google Form. I’m the only one that does all of the attendance, so trial and error of what has worked over the last two school years for me and then me reporting what the pros and cons of both are.”
According to Lashley, until further notice, this plan will be in place to take advantage of appliances and systems that the district already has.
“We’ve talked about what are ways to have things being automated, but a lot of times, there’s ways that that could be either with data privacy, because you can’t just get some random app and have all of our student data in there without having licensing and making sure that our data is protected. There’s fancy scanners or things for scanning your student ID — again, that costs money,” Lashley said. “So there’s some things with the expansion of technology that maybe in the future we would be able to use other methods, but as of right now, due to data privacy and financial reasons, we’re not trying to adopt an entire new tech system and we’re sticking with what we have, which is email, Google, phones, the services that we already have as a district.”
