Technology Puts Parents, School in Closer Touch

When Michael Silva used to ask his son if he had homework, the sixth-grader’s usual response was, “Not today, Dad.” Only long after would Silva find out differently.

Thanks to the Internet, Silva knows better now.

Such shenanigans are becoming the stuff of nostalgia, the days when kids could intercept report cards from the mailbox before their parents got to it, get detention and claim they were at a friend’s house for the afternoon, or announce a good grade on a test that lies hidden in the backpack’s depths.

For the 800 preschoolers through eighth-graders at St. Mary and All Angels School in Aliso Viejo, those days are over.

Teachers at the parochial school now can send grades, attendance and disciplinary records through a hand-held computer to the Internet. Eight seconds later, parents can enter a password and download the information free.

“This is a benefit to working parents who don’t usually interact with the teacher,” said Diane DiCorpo-Fuller, headmaster at St. Mary. “This isn’t going to be the answer to everything. It’s just the missing piece to getting parents more involved in their child’s education.”

Silva said he will be an enthusiastic user. As a frequent business traveler who felt frustratingly out of touch with his son’s school, he now has an available connection at all times.

And since the Schoolsoft program was introduced a month ago, student attitudes have changed as well.

“It makes the kid behave more,” DiCorpo-Fuller said. “Now that they know their parents will interact with the teacher, they’re more likely to do better in school.”

Private schools such as St. Mary are way ahead of the curve on this one.

The Orange County Department of Education has been working for almost two years on networking the county’s 27 school districts through cable modems, but the project has been progressing far more slowly than anticipated.

“We’re trying to find a way for every district to be connected. Part of the problem is that [schools] aren’t even connected internally yet,” said Bill Habermehl, associate superintendent. “Right now, it’s not on the horizon.”

Habermehl blames the delay on a law passed under former Gov. Pete Wilson that mandates spending funds--about $1 billion through 2002--on books first, not computer wiring or technology. Additionally, he said, districts have been reluctant to rush into technology they fear may quickly become obsolete, while others have found the cost of upgrading to be higher than anticipated.

But just weeks ago, Habermehl said, three Orange County high schools did start experimenting with high-speed cable connections among themselves. The pilot project probably will evolve next year to offering parental access to grades, enrollment and any upcoming school activities.

But the timeline for the rest of Orange County’s 550 schools--serving about 472,000 students--is uncertain, perhaps years away. In public schools, “you have to make sure you can afford that opportunity for every parent that wants it,” Habermehl said. That means already cash-strapped districts would have to find the money.

Jim Weldon, the creator of the technology that St. Mary is using, says private schools have readily embraced the technology because of greater financial latitude and the flexibility that comes with being smaller and not attached to a bureaucracy. At least two other private Christian schools in Orange County also use the technology.

Weldon said 300 schools nationwide have purchased his technology; other schools use competing software products.

Advocacy groups express some concern over privacy--as some St. Mary’s parents have, opting not to use the program--but seem encouraged by the technology, even if it’s just a start. “Any system which permits more effective communication between the school and parent sounds OK,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Media Education, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group dealing with children and the Internet. “But none of this should be thought of as replacing person-to-person contact.”

St. Mary Assistant Principal Penny Pfleiderer said the technology means parents no longer have an excuse to say they were unaware of their child’s behavior. “Do you think the parents of the kids in Colorado were in daily contact with their child’s lives?” she asked, responding to the massacre in Littleton, Colo. “I don’t. This is a way to build a solid foundation between parents and children. It gets harder every darn year. We need to change that.”