Online registration will be available later this summer for families planning to send their children to Seymour Community Schools this fall.
School officials said the new option is a way to make the registration process easier and more accessible for incoming students. It also will provide the schools with more accurate and up-to-date information on students and save time for school employees who, until now, had to enter such data into the school’s computer system themselves.
“It was decided to do this to help our parents and staff,” said Brian Rodman, the school district’s technology director. “This will allow our students’ parents to fill out their information from home once it is up and operational.”
He hopes the online registration program will be available later this summer.
“We are hoping by the end of July it will be ready to go,” he said. “They are working on it now.”
All of the schools will be able to upload most of the required forms to their websites, allowing the district to import submitted information directly into its student management system.
Parents will be able to view what information the school has on file for their children and make changes if needed.
Rodman said there haven’t been any problems with the school’s registration process in the past, but the change to online registration allows the school system to modernize and convert more files from paper to digital.
“It is being done to help save our parents and staff time; and since we rely so heavily on data these days, it will give us more timely access to our data,” he said.
The service will be available to all families of Seymour Community Schools students. Parents will be issued a code that will allow them to enter information for their children.
Once they have done so, the school will be notified that information has been entered.
“The school will then verify that data before it actually enters into the student management system,” Rodman said. “New families will use it to enter their demographic data, and returning families will be able to make any changes to their existing data.”
Although the school system is always trying to attract more students, Rodman doesn’t think having online registration will increase the number of students.
“It will just give us more accurate and timely access to the data,” he said. “It is our hope that our parents recognize we are trying to streamline this process. They will no longer have to fill out the same forms every year.”
The software to run the program will cost the school corporation some initial money, but Rodman said it will save money in the long run by reducing the time that it takes to manually enter data coming from paper copies submitted by parents.
Other school districts use similar programs, and Seymour is modeling its online registration after the system at New Albany Floyd County Consolidated School Corp.
For families who do not have Internet access at home, computers will be set up at the administration building and at each school for parents to come in and enter a child’s information.