Tuesday, Aug. 28, 2001 | 10:51 a.m.
Clark County School District students have a new computer system to thank for these last few lazy days of summer.
School in Southern Nevada usually starts at least a week before Labor Day, but this year it was delayed from Monday to Thursday to accommodate the installation of a new computer system, Clark County School District officials said.
"It made what the Department of Motor Vehicles did seem little," Philip Brody, the district's chief financial officer, said of the undertaking.
Brody said the district's student information computer system had to be shut down for about a week to transfer records into the new system.
Elementary schools were using the new system last year, but the district's entire data base was not switched until this month, when middle and high schools got the system.
The district had to wait until Aug. 10, when all of the district's year-round schools were closed for the school year, to begin transferring data.
The project was overdue, Brody said.
"Our former accounting system was about 30 years old," he said. "It was a very cumbersome system written by people who retired 20 years ago. We had to transfer all of the data -- for 230,000 students at 250 schools -- from one system to another."
To complicate matters, the old and new systems do not store the data in the same format, he said.
Opening day was set for Thursday to allow schools to recoup registration time lost to the computer shutdown, Superintendent Carlos Garcia said. High school registration, which had been open through the summer, resumed in earnest Aug. 20.
The extra time helped most schools, but at Silverado High School three extra days wasn't enough.
The new computer system caused delays in registration for about 300 students at Silverado, the district's largest high school. Those students will start a day to several days later than the rest of the school's 3,200 students. No other schools are facing such delays, he said.
Called "Sassy," the new computer software will allow the district to gather information on students ranging from attendance to test scores. In addition to installing the new software, the district had to install new computers and provide training in all 250 schools.
"There's about 150 different pieces of data," Brody said.
One benefit of the program is that the district's information will be directly linked to the Nevada Department of Education.
"They were asking us for data we normally did not keep," Brody said. "In the past, we gave them reports. This way, they can just download the information from our computers."
Sassy also will allow schools to pull out their own reports on test scores and other information from state records. Although Sassy was conceived before Garcia became superintendent just over a year ago, the system ties in with his push to more closely analyze test scores and justify the effectiveness of school programs, he said.
Brody did not have figures available for the entire cost to the district. The upgrade was required as part of the state's SMART computer system.
"The schools are getting in there and getting the work done," Brody said. "I keep reminding the principals that we won't have to go through this again next year."
Students should make the most of the waning hours of their summer break. Brody said the new system is not expected to cause further delays.
And no matter when school starts, the year still lasts 180 days by law. That means the school year will end June 10, compared with June 7 last year.
archive
