Boulder Valley School District offering families help with online registration

Aug. 06--A steady stream of families sought hands-on help Wednesday with Boulder Valley School District registration issues at a district help center.

The district first tried the help center a year ago for seven days after switching to an online application for free and reduced lunches and adding parent portal accounts at elementary schools.

After seeing about 1,000 families come through that week, the district decided to expand this summer. The center will be available for more than two weeks, while the district is also adding staff members and doubling the number of computers to reduce wait times.

Help is provided in English and Spanish.

This year's help center opened Wednesday and goes through Aug. 18. School starts Aug. 16 for elementary students, sixth-graders and ninth-graders. The rest of the middle and high school students start Aug. 17, while there's a staggered start for kindergarten students on Aug. 18 and 21.

Parents can get help setting up their Infinite Campus parent portal accounts, completing updates for students already enrolled, enrolling new students and submitting applications for free and reduced-price lunches.

They can also get connected with the district's homeless student coordinator or get information about other services. For the future, the district also is looking at pulling in transportation and other services.

"We want a one-stop shop," said Madeleine Case, Boulder Valley's director of parent and family partnerships.

Mike Wilcox, Boulder Valley's director for student enrollment, said the district began moving to online registration in 2008. At first, parents filled out enrollment forms online, then printed them out and took them to their schools.

Now, he said, the district has moved the whole enrollment system and worked with the vendor to simplify the interface to make it easier to access on smartphones or Chromebooks.

The online parent portal system also has become a key communication tool for schools, used for everything from class lists to grades to announcements.

While it's increased communication, Wilcox said, there are also access issues for families without computers at home.

"This has been a gap we need to do better on," he said.

On Wednesday, people were coming into the help center for a variety of reasons.

Some don't have access to a computer, while others had trouble logging into their parent portal accounts or ran into issues during registration.

One mom on Wednesday wanted to fix a misspelling of her children's last names in the system, while a dad couldn't access the parent portal on his computer. Another was trying to enroll her grandchild in middle school and needed help adding documents that show she has custody.

Tim Hogue said he sought help at the center to register his daughter at Broomfield High because he's not that comfortable with technology.

"I just had many questions," he said. "I was very frustrated. Coming here, they were very helpful. I'm glad it's done."

Boulder's Maria Morales said she came seeking help to update information for her three children and enroll a fourth who's new to the district.

"It's easier to fill it all out here than to go somewhere and have questions and no one to answer them," she said through a translator.

Amy Bounds: 303-473-1341, boundsa@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/boundsa

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