In the old days

There was one open house per year for your child's school.  You had 5 minutes with each teacher after you stood in line with many others, then felt pressured because there was a line behind you as well. Or you could take an afternoon off from work to meet for 20 minutes after school for a parent teacher conference.

You can still do that now but not waste the first 4 minutes of 5 or the first 15 of 20 with info that is now available to you on-line 24/7 from any Internet-ready computer or iOS device.
 

Does this mean?

Does this mean that all teachers will grade papers 2 minutes after they are passed in and have scores posted instantaneously? 

The day is still only 24 hours long for our teachers. Please understand that information will be updated in a timely manner and that each teacher has a plan.

Does this mean that all teachers will suddenly prefer email to phone calls?

Many do prefer email to snail mail or phone tag with busy parents, but we do not require teachers to email you.  They are of course expected to contact you with in a reasonable amount of time to address your concerns.

Does this mean that all there is to grades is a list of assignments with a corresponding number? 

No, not until a trained professional takes into consideration all the things that they defined for your son/daughter at the beginning of the term.  That might mean class participation, a quarterly exam or book report that counts 10 to 20% of the term grade. Teachers are required to post their grade expectations and methods at the beginning of the term.

Disclaimer

This system is provided as a convenience. Grades and other information provided are not official records and may or may not be accurate. Neither this institution nor Pearson School Systems accepts any responsibility for information provided by this system and/or for any damages resulting from information provided by this system. For official grades and student records contact your school.

Privacy and Terms of Use

You may click on the bottom of any page in PowerSchool  for details on Privacy and Terms of Use. You should know that we can and will monitor Parental/Student Access.  The Parent Access Summary  lists the date, time accessed, and duration (minutes).  The same thing can be tracked for student access.

FAQ's

Q. I emailed my son/daughter's teacher and have not heard back from them.

A. We do not require teachers to answer email by email, they should certainly get back to you in a reasonable amount of time but not everyone is comfortable communicating in this fashion. We ask our teachers not to open any email without a subject line, and even then only if the subject line makes sense in the context of the sender.  If your email address is something unidentifiable like buffythedragonslayer@hotmail.com, teachers could likely ignore your email. Always mention PowerSchool and the student's name for clarity in the subject line.

Q. I hit "reply" to respond to an automated progress report and it did not go to the teacher.

A. All email from the server comes from one account (the PowerSchool Administrator), so if you just hit the "reply" button in your email program you are actually sending that administrator your email not the teacher. Teacher email addresses are in PowerSchool...when you enter PowerSchool as a parent and are looking at a screen with grades and attendance, each teacher's name is in blue - their name is actually a hyperlink to their email address.

Q. My son or daughter was only absent once but PowerSchool shows 2 absences.

A. When a teacher takes period attendance in PowerSchool, their entries will appear on the quick lookup screen (and appear to impact the totals). Absent from school is covered by looking at home room only.

Q.    My son or daughter has never been tardy but is listed as having three of them.

A.  In PowerSchool all entries for tardy and dismissal are recorded in the same way (loss of minutes), so on the quick lookup screen they are lumped together in one category called Tardies.  If you click on the hyperlink (blue number) for tardies you will be taken to a screen that lists all the entries by date and code (on this page you can tell if someone was late or dismissed.)

Q.  I signed up for an email notification regarding Balance Alert, what types of balances might my child have.

A.  We are not currently using this feature.