Published on: Wednesday, September 02, 2009

By Nancy Royden

The schedules of thousands of students in the Prince George’s County Public Schools were incorrect during the first days of school last week, sending district employees scrambling to rectify them.

“The majority of our students were able to start school today with the correct schedule; however, we recognize there were conflicts with respect to schedules for some high school students,” William R. Hite Jr., superintendent of schools said last week. “We are working with the vendor to find a solution and have deployed central office staff to affected high schools to assist with registration and scheduling.”

Hite apologized during an Aug. 27 press conference in the Sasscer Administration Building in Upper Marlboro for all the problems that faced students, teachers, parents, elected officials and others. This affected more than 8,000 students without a correct schedule on the first day of school. Some students received blank schedules, and others were partially blank or one class was missing.

He said some students at Laurel High School did spend time in the gymnasium due to scheduling problems.

PGCPS Spokeswoman Lynn McCawley said all students had schedules for the opening of school on Monday, Aug. 31.

The school system uses SchoolMax, a commercial off-the-shelf software package designed for managing student information. It is designed to collect student data and is sometimes referred to as a student information system. The original purchase price was approximately $4.1 million. The annual maintenance costs are approximately $329,000 and annual hardware maintenance costs are $85,443, the district’s Chief Information Officer W. Wesley Watts Jr., said during an Aug. 27 presentation to the board of trustees.

McCawley said SchoolMax officials have been responsive in working with the district to resolve the software issues.

“During the process of scheduling, the school system experienced glitches with the SchoolMax software. The vendor worked with us to provide ‘patches’ to fix the issues; however, this delayed the scheduling process for the 2009-2010 school year, allowing only three weeks for a typical 2-month process,” she said.

Another challenge for the district was scheduling “singleton” courses, such as performing arts, advanced placement and international baccalaureate. In some cases, staff missed steps while inputting information into the system.

“Because of the Web-based nature of the software, bandwidth proved to be a problem at some sites, as well, slowing down the scheduling process,” she said.

Watts said the school district went live with SchoolMax Aug. 19, 2008 and at that time, it started handling information regarding enrollment, attendance, grades, grade reporting, discipline, elementary scheduling and walk-in scheduling.

During the Aug. 27 press conference, Hite said the district is reviewing its contract with SchoolMax, and is considering seeking compensation, but this was to be done once schedules are properly adjusted. The district must pay its employees overtime wages when appropriate.

He assured students and their parents they would not be penalized because of scheduling problems. Saturday walk-in tutoring sessions are planned through September if students would like to attend them, but this is not mandatory.

“This week has been a trying one,” Hite said, thanking staff for the work they completed in efforts to rectify scheduling problems.

He said problems arose from data errors while schedule information was being entered, as well as those attributed to SchoolMax.

“There was some human error and some technological issues as well,” he said.

Next year, schedules are to be mailed to students and their parents before the academic year begins, he added.

Hite said it is common for some students to have scheduling snafus at the beginning of the school year, and the vast number of students had correct students.

Maryland District 23 Sen. Douglas J.J. Peters spent Aug. 28 at Bowie High School helping Principal Jane Spence work out student schedules.

“When I spoke with Principal Spence yesterday she told me her most urgent need was for assistance with data entry. That is why I spent the day today in front of a computer entering data at Bowie High,” Peters said last week.

Peters, chairman of the Prince George’s County Senate Delegation, said although long-term issues must be addressed, the first priority was to get students into classrooms as quickly as possible.

“As I said earlier this week, once the students are led in the appropriate schedules, I urge the school system to conduct a through review and to take steps to make sure this problem will not be repeated,” he said.

Likewise, Hite said last week the problems with student schedules were not satisfactory.

“Having incorrect schedules for any of our students is unacceptable and inexcusable. This matter will be resolved quickly and correctly,” he said.