Lunch point-of-sale system confusion.

Received this email from the Ridgewood Public Schools tonight:

Hello Parents of Ridgewood Middle Schools and High School,

As you may know, we have implemented a Point-of-Sales system in the cafeterias at the Middle Schools and High School.  In order to make the lunch period run quickly and efficiently, we ask that you remind your students that they will require a Key Pad number for purchasing items from the cafeterias, either on account or in cash.  Your students key pad number can be found in Skyward Family or Student Access under Food Service.  If you need assistance, please email skywardhelp@ridgewood.k12.nj.us.Thank you for your patience during this transition period.

I do encourage everyone to be patient (and nice) during the transition, but I have to agree with some of my friends who find it utterly baffling that students must enter a PIN number in order to purchase something with cash. Makes no sense to me. (Not to mention -- if you don't use Skyward to pay for lunch in advance, then you don't have a PIN...or you don't know you have a PIN.) I'm hoping this is something that can be tweaked and corrected. I don't understand why a Point of Sale system needs to track cash purchases. 

I'll let you know if I hear about anything changing.

Thumbs up & down: online payment system.

Talking with some friends (also Ridgewood parents) about the announcement that the school district has moved to a new system for online payments for things like activity fees, lunches, etc. One friend complained that the district is now "nickel and diming" us with the $3.50 transaction fee for online payments. She said something like, "the system was working fine before, and it was free!" Another parent commented that the District had successfully found a new revenue stream.

I give a mixed thumbs up and thumbs down on this. On the one hand, a better online payment system, that lets parents "load" their account with cash and then use it as necessary, seems good. I never did the online lunch ordering with my kids, so I'm not sure how it works if you order a lunch and then don't end up using it. Do you get your money back? It seems like with this system, you could order lunches but then if your child doesn't actually receive a lunch, then your account won't be charged? That's what it sounds like to me. I also like that now high school students will be able to draw on the account to buy lunch. Previously there was never a cashless way to get lunch at RHS. I don't know how it works, though. (Swipe your ID card? Do they even have magnetic stripes?)

I guess I can see an advantage to being able to check my account online in Skyward, then make payments, etc., in one place. (Although I notice that the instructions say you have to do activity fee payments and lunch payments separately, so that's not such a time saver.) I read that the system will allow me to "monitor" my child's food selections...I'm not sure what that means exactly. If kids are in elementary school, there isn't a "selection" is there? Don't they just get whatever is served that day? Maybe it means middle school and high school. Eh. Maybe that's important for some people to know if your kid had a sandwich or a cookie. I guess I'm neutral on that feature.

On the other hand, it does irk me that the District says they are charging the $3.50 as a "convenience fee." It's not really more convenient for me to use Skyward vs. Community Pass. Whether I click on this URL or that URL, neither one is more convenient than the other.

It might have been better if the District had explained that the previous processing of online payments with Community Pass also cost $$ per transaction -- only in the past, the cost was absorbed by the District. It was never "free." It was just free for parents. There is a difference. (From what I understand, the District was spending around $30,000 per year between the user fee and the transaction fees.)

The reality is, now the cost of processing online transactions will be paid for by only those parents using the service, instead of being paid for by all taxpayers. This seems fair to me. I just think it wasn't explained well.

So I give the new online payment system a thumbs up, but the communications about it a thumbs down.

Progress Reports for high school and middle school students are viewable online.

Parents of RHS, BF and GW students should have received an email this week, alerting us that progress reports are available for our students online, via the District's new Skyward student information system. I jumped on to check my son's report and was interested to see what kind of info was reported.

Once parents or students log-in to Skyward, for each class you can see your child's current grade as of the progress report cut-off date (not sure what that date was). You can also see comments from the teacher. In my son's case, all his teachers posted some sort of comment. One of his teachers specifically indicated some things that she would like him to do differently, and also recommended that he come after school for help. I'm not trying to air his "dirty laundry" -- my point is, I would not have known that he was having any "issue," whatsoever, in this class. I really appreciated having this info this early in the semester.

Of course, the real question is -- what do we parents do with this info? As much as I love transparency and access to information, I am keenly aware of my own tendency to get, shall we say, "over-involved." It's not that I want to meddle or interfere with teachers or assignments...but I know that as soon as I saw my son's progress report, I spoke to him about ways he could do some things differently. That's fine -- that's what I would have done if he had received a printed progress report. But looking into the future, I worry about giving parents like me access all semester long...I don't want to start checking grades every day and reacting to whatever I see, creating stress and conflict for my son.

It's exciting to start having more tools for engagement and more insight into our children's achievements, but we as a school community will need to carefully implement increased access for parents. We'll have to see how it goes.

Click here for instructions from the District on accessing Skyward progress reports.

News from the BOE

What's that? You didn't watch tonight's meeting on webcast or on Cablevision Channel 77? Here's a little bit of what we covered:

Dr. Fishbein presented the Opening of School Report, the key fact of which was how much the District's enrollment has grown since last year.

Enrollment Figures as of 9/10/10*
(9/09 figures are in parentheses)

Glen (36) 44 +8
Hawes (408) 409 +1
Orchard (323) 340 +17
Ridge (478) 496 +18
Somerville (533) 540 +7
Travell (410) 408 -2
Willard (456) 501 +45
TOTAL ELEMENTARY (2,644) 2738 +94

BFMS (687) 694 +7
GWMS (675) 693 +18
TOTAL MIDDLE SCHOOL (1,362) 1387 +25

RHS (1,666) 1692 +26

Total Enrollment (5672) 5817 +145

*These numbers can be expected to change a little still, as families who moved away are removed from the rolls.

Also at last night's meeting, Dr. Fishbein recognized Jane Blakely, who was the recipient of the 2010 Ashby Award for her contributions to Ridgewood High School over the past 26 years.

Michele Lenhard read a list of all donors to the Ridgewood Public Schools for the 2009-10 year. It's a long list (maybe I'll post it here later), but the total was $546,695. That's amazing! Thank you, Ridgewood!

The Board's new Student Representative, Max Z., reported on the opening of the high school. Bottom line: the new lockers are a big hit.

We had a great presentation from our architect, engineer, and construction managers on the status of various referendum and capital projects throughout the District. The detailed report, complete with photos, amounts spent and percent complete, will be posted on the website, hopefully tomorrow. I'll post a link when it's there.

Business Administrator Angelo DeSimone presented the reorganization of the IT (formerly MIS) Department and described some of the many projects that department has been busy with all summer. Right now, the big effort is in getting all students and families set-up in Skyward, the new student information system. There were some "glitches" with the initial mailing of instructional letters to parents: apparently there were old, out-of-date address still existing in the old SASI system, and they were mistakenly imported into Skyward. So about 250-300 letters were unable to be delivered, and those parents are having to correct their information (and prove residency, if their address has changed). It's definitely a lot of work for everyone (including parents), but they are working through it and the system is going to be a huge improvement once it's all in place.

Mr. DeSimone also spoke about many hardware projects completed or currently underway, including replacing 350+ computers and upgrading our wireless internet service. When it's complete, there will be full wireless service in every school -- no more hot spots or dead zones. And, I was glad to hear that students will be able to access the internet eventually, once they can install good firewalls that can't be hacked, with students trying to get in and change grades, etc. Full wireless access in our schools -- especially the high school -- will be a great step forward in terms of our students' connected learning.

Sheila Brogan gave a legislative update, and said the Obama administration has announced a third round of Race to the Top grants -- will the third time be the charm for New Jersey?

Finally, Regina Botsford reported that, while we are waiting for official scores, it appears that Hawes Special Ed students may not have met AYP (Annual Yearly Progress) in Language Arts, which would place Hawes on the "Early Warning List." I'll write more in the next few days about what this means, but it appears we will have plenty of company from some very high performing districts. (The last time Ridgewood had a school on the Early Warning List was RHS in 2005-06, again due to special ed students' scores in Language Arts). More to come on this...