- Easton Area School District's elementary school will begin rolling out digital report cards for the elementary school grades this school year
- The district plans to gradually introduce the idea, utilizing PowerSchool, a service with which many parents are already familiar
- The transition begins in the district's second trimester, when parents will be informed of the change
EASTON, Pa. — Easton elementary students will have to come up with better ways to hide those grades this school year as the district begins utilizing electronic report cards.
During Tuesday’s standing committee meeting, district officials were brought up to date on the status of electronic report cards for elementary school students, which will be rolled out over the next few months.
“We currently use our own standards-based elementary report cards that are concise and geared toward effectively sharing student progress with parents,” the district’s Curriculum and Instruction website reads.
“To this end, we have created two DIFFERENT elementary report cards, one for K-2 and another for grades 3-5. Our elementary program works within a timeframe of trimesters rather than quarters.”
Director of Elementary Education Andrew Doster said the elementary school’s first trimester will feature the standard printed report cards, which will be made available during the three scheduled days for parent/teacher conferences.
Following that, the district will begin segueing into purely digital report cards.
“In the second trimester, we'll be putting out communication in which we will make our intent to move towards digital report cards at the end of the second trimester; however, providing parents the option in that second trimester, still, of requesting a printed version of their child's report card through their elementary school principal. And then, the third trimester, we will be 100% digital for our elementary report cards,” Doster said, also noting further details will be worked out in the near future.
Officials confirmed many, if not most, parents in the EASD currently use PowerSchool, which offers kindergarten through 12th grade software and cloud-based offerings. Staff members are testing the software now in anticipation of introducing it to parents to the platform.
EASD Board of Education President Meg Sayago also asked about the status of secondary report cards, which have been sent out via mail, as well as quarterly report cards.
Sayago characterized the quarterly reports as “outdated by the time they reach houses.”
Director of Secondary Education Michael Koch said, “We have signed on with a company, we're approved to be able to place those in the same fashion that Mr. Doster described for elementary, to do the same thing at the secondary level, which would include both progress reports and report cards.
"So that information obviously being forthcoming, the communication plan will be similar, but it will be a lot sooner. I think most of our parents are used to accessing PowerSchool for grades six through 12, so it's less of a discussion about how we go digital in that particular area.”
