The Bryan County School District offers a web-based home-to-school collaboration tool entitled ParentCONNECTxp. This program allows parents/guardians a way to keep track of your child’s academic progress-online. If registered, parents can visit the password-protected site to view a range of useful information including up-to-date information on your child’s grades, attendance/tardiness, homework assignments, discipline, and course assignments.
In addition to this valuable information, parents can communicate with teachers via e-mail through ParentCONNECTxp and retrieve important county or school level announcements by clicking on the "Announcement" button. To maintain the integrity of student data, the ParentCONNECTxp application stores all student information in a "read only" system, so the information is protected from modification. All data exchanged between the ParentCONNECTxp system and the parent’s computer are encrypted to further protect the data and to ensure privacy.
After parents have registered, they may wish to enter an email address in order for alert notifications from ParentCONNECTxp to be sent automatically to their email address. There are six types of alerts that parents may choose from or they may click "apply to all." The choices are discipline incidents, unexcused absences, tardies, missing assignments, failing scores, and unverified absences.
One frequently asked question about ParentCONNECTxp has been how someone could access assignment grades. An important thing to remember when trying to access your child’s grade is the location of assignment grades. Report card grades are accessed by clicking on the "Grades" pencil within ParentCONNECTxp. However, assignment grades can only be accessed by clicking on the "Assignments" pencil and then clicking on the button labeled "Class Score." Opening this will take you to a screen which shows individual grades per assignment.
Technology Specialists at each school have presented or will be presenting more about ParentCONNECTxp to parents through PTSO programs or other parent programs. Also, teachers have been trained or are being trained in all ParentCONNECTxp components. While no one expects the Internet to take the place of regular teacher-parent contacts, we see ParentCONNECTxp as a powerful school-to-home communications tool. The board and administration of the school district also believe that this collaboration and communication between home and school will increase parental involvement, ultimately improving student achievement. If you have any questions about ParentCONNECTxp or have trouble accessing components within ParentCONNECT, please review the ParentCONNECTxp step-by-step registration directions and information packet which are located by clicking the Parent Connect menu button on the Bryan County District website or contact the Bryan County Technology Department.
- by Lori Warren
Warren is technology director of the Bryan County school system.