May 2005 — Applications
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Southern California Catholic School, Community Praise Web-Based Communication Solution
The No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law with an aggressive goal of improving the academic performance of all students and eliminating the achievement gap between different races and classes. NCLB also required the U.S. Department of Education (D'E) to make recommendations for a National Education Technology Plan, which was released in January 2005. This plan highlights the global competition the United States will face over the next decade and the important role technology will play in that competitive framework.
The impact of NCLB is felt nationwide on many fronts. Schools and districts have been forced to examine their standards and find ways to improve. Often, the weight of NCLB is most heavily felt in schools lacking financial resources. St. Barbara School, located in Santa Ana, Calif., is a sound example of a school working hard to meet the requirements and standards set by these policies with a limited technology budget.
St. Barbara is a K-8 school comprised of about 480 students and 22 teachers, with English being the second language for about 80% of the school and local community. The school is located in a transitional area with a high population of new immigrants, especially Hispanic and Vietnamese. And as families become more financially and culturally established, they often relocate. This makes it essential for the school to continually market for new students by offering a progressive academic curriculum and a technology plan that gets parents involved.
St. Barbara was facing three major challenges: finding the best solution to communicate school information to its greater community, completing the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) accreditation process, and finding innovative ways to market the school for new enrollment.
Making Parents Active
After two years of searching for a cost-effective solution to meet the above goals, the staff at St. Barbara contacted SchoolFusion (www.schoolfusion.com) and found its school communication solution met all of their needs. The SchoolFusion Calendar enables the school to share important events with the community through its Web site. This calendar is updatable by nontechnical school staff and is easy for community members to use — many of whom have little or no technical knowledge.
SchoolFusion Classrooms, which are also incorporated into the school’s Web site (http://stbarbara.groupfusion.net), encourage parental involvement and improve parent-teacher communication. Implementing this solution solved the communication issues expressed by parents, enabling them to access their children’s assignments, testing schedules and grades via the Internet. Since implementing the system, many parents have been able to take a more active role in their child’s education and in school events.
Since SchoolFusion is a Web-based program, parents can access it from any computer with an Internet connection at any time. This is important for our parents because of their long working hours and the commonality of both parents working full time. Thus, the ability to access information at their own pace solves the frustration caused by telephone communication when English is not their native language.
