By Kristine Snodgrass, Staff Writer
Students in the West Windsor-Plainsboro School District who are considering playing hooky may want to think twice — their attendance records are now only a click away from their parents.
This fall, the district began using a new database system that allows parents to access their children’s records online, including attendance, demographics, emergency contacts and health information. Final grades and report cards of high school and middle school students are also available.
”It’s really a way that we can kind of build better connections … between school and home,” Assistant Superintendent Steve Mayer said.
The system, called Campus Portal, allows parents to view the district’s most up-to-date records. This means they can check daily to see if their student made it to school, Mr. Mayer said.
The district will also be using the system to replace mailed report cards in order to reduce costs. High school students will no longer receive paper report cards, and middle school students will receive their last report cards this term.
Report cards for kindergarten through fifth-grade students are planned to go online this spring.
The district began its changeover to the new system in the spring in order to replace a system that actually consisted of about 12 different databases for tracking student data, Mr. Mayer said.
”We’re really trying to streamline down to a single database,” he said. “That will then streamline a lot of the work that our clerical staff has to become involved in.”
The system is run by a computer program called Infinite Campus, which is used at school districts across the country, including every district in the state of South Dakota.
But the program is fairly new to New Jersey, technology director Rick Cave said. Area districts with similar systems include South Brunswick and Lawrence, he said.
A committee of parents, teachers and other staff members was consulted in the spring on the selection of the program, and how it would be implemented.
”Our goal is to get all the parents online because we want to utilize this as our primary means of communication,” Mr. Cave said.
A committee of teachers is currently brainstorming about which of the program’s features to utilize in the future, including information on class assignments, upcoming due dates, syllabi and teacher grade books.
Though it is Web-based, the system is secure, Mr. Cave said.
”It’s like home banking,” he said.
Letters were sent earlier this month to 11,000 parents inviting them to register in the database. About 4,000 parents, mostly of high school students, have responded so far, Mr. Cave said. This week, the district began inviting students to become registered so they can see the same information as their parents.
Any parent who has misplaced the letter should contact the district, Mr. Mayer said.

