Birmingham District Saves Parents Time With New Registration System
Birmingham
City Schools (BCS), a large urban school district serving
Birmingham, AL,
implemented a new registration system this year in an effort to save
the
district money, protect it from potential legal problems and, most
importantly,
save parents and district staff members time.
The
district's
new Registration
Gateway, from SRC
Solutions, can be used by parents
registering their children for school from anywhere at any time. Parents
also have
the freedom to take as long as they like to complete the process,
although it
can also go quite quickly — particularly if another student in the
family has
already been registered.
"It
is
estimated that BCS will save costs related to personnel hours, paper and
printing," said Sherene Carpenter, attendance coordinator for BCS. "The
main
goal is to save time."
Carpenter
said
one component of the new registration system, which the district just
began using this year, she finds particularly helpful is the safeguards
to make
sure that only "clean data" is put into the system, meaning district
officials
do not have to go back and make corrections.
For
instance,
the system is aware of all the potential addresses in the school
district's boundaries. As a result, it has a type-ahead address function
so, if
a parent were to make a mistake when typing in his or her address, the
system
will self-correct immediately before moving on to the next step.
To
avoid
any potential Health Information Portability and Accountability Act
(HIPAA)
concerns, medical forms that parents fill out with information about
their
children is forwarded directly to the district's medical staff, avoiding
the
need for anybody else to have access to it.
Once
the
first student in a family is registered via Registration Gateway, the
process is much quicker for successive students in the same family,
typically
taking less than half the time as the first.
The
registration
process also asks for information for younger children in a given
family, potentially giving the district data and information that can
help in
upcoming years with plans for kindergarten and pre-kindergarten classes.
The
system
also employs voice prompts and offers the possibility for the district
to sell advertising on the site, further defraying the cost.
Carpenter
said,
"The registration process is more streamlined and organized," for the
district that serves more than 25,000 students in 49 schools.
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.