THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 22, 1994 TAG: 9409200142
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JON GLASS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 109 lines
AS NEW PRINCIPAL at Granby High, Michael Caprio was grateful for anything to help smooth the first day of school. He found unlikely allies - a handful of Norfolk public schools' computer whizzes, who have quietly launched an information revolution using databases and gigabytes.
One of the latest creations to come out of this group, Management Information Systems, is a computer program called ``walk-in scheduling.''
MIS programmers developed a software package that enables principals and guidance counselors to assign students a classroom schedule with a few strokes on a computer keyboard.
``I just think it worked wonders,'' Caprio said.
It may not sound like much, but for Caprio, the technology cured one of the biggest headaches of opening day.
Under the old system, schedules were assigned using paper lists of classes and teachers. On the first day of school - when as many as 200 students might show up without schedules - the backlog and ensuing paper chase could become a nightmare.
``Parents are real concerned about scheduling,'' Caprio said. ``Think about the mess that would occur if their kids went to school for three or four days without being in class.''
Booker T. Washington High tested the program last spring, and Granby installed it this year. School administrators want to expand it into all of Norfolk's secondary schools.
Parents and students seemed impressed with the change.
``It was an absolute breeze,'' said Kathy Allain, who accompanied her son, Matt, to discuss a class schedule change at Granby last week. ``They don't have to say, `We'll work on it and get back to you.' As a parent, I know he's not wasting time. With this program, it's easier to get a student back on track.''
Chalk up another success for members of the MIS computer crew. They work in relative obscurity in the downtown administrative building's 13th-story ``penthouse,'' the central office's top floor, accessible only by steps or a single elevator on the 12th floor. But their efforts, with millions of bytes of school information at their fingertips, increasingly play an important role in shaping school policy.
``The value with a system like this is being able to combine data and see trends,'' Deputy Superintendent Frank Sellew said. ``You can make policy decisions based on that.''
The MIS student information network has enough data on students to give Big Brother conspiracy theorists a lifetime of paranoia. Not just anybody, though, can access the data because the information is protected by an elaborate security system, officials said.
And there's no information that schools wouldn't ordinarily keep, such as test scores, grades, attendance, discipline and - something new - probation records. That's only a few of the more than 30 student ``applications'' stored on computer.
Not only that, but the data tracks students back to 1987. Such ``longitudinal'' tracking, officials said, is rare, even among those few school districts in the state that run their own information management division. Most school districts, like the other south Hampton Roads districts, share information networks with city government or contract with private firms for services.
``We have in place - now this is going to sound like a lot of bravado - what I think is the finest system in the state and even in the nation,'' John Alluisi, the school system's database manager, said. ``It gives us an incredible amount of information.''
Partly because of its computer sophistication, the school system was selected in 1989 by the federal departments of Justice and Education to pilot a new computerized discipline-tracking program called SMART. Under the system, student infractions are stored on computer and then studied for trends.
After analyzing SMART records, school officials confirmed that the majority of discipline problems were caused by a small group of repeat offenders. That has helped school officials pinpoint problem students and create programs to reduce disruptive behavior.
SMART also influenced administrators to alter attendance policy this year. The new rules instruct principals to opt for in-school punishment when possible because of computer data showing that suspending students just worsens attendance and academic problems.
The data also has been a godsend to school administrators.
``If an administrator wants a list of Advanced Placement math kids who scored 1100 on their SATs, we can pop that out in 10 minutes,'' Alluisi said.
When Melanie Yules, an assistant principal at Booker T., wanted to find out which students still hadn't passed the state-mandated Literacy Passport Test, she called an MIS analyst whose job is to produce reports on request. Yules wanted the information to ensure that the students got the help they needed to pass the test.
``They saved me three days' work,'' Yules said.
The brains behind the MIS student network is a second-hand IBM mainframe computer capable of holding 16 gigabytes of data. Translated, that's roughly 16 billion characters, or 2 1/2 million pages of data.
In its 1994-95 budget, the school system will spend about $1.8 million on management information, about 1 percent of its 1994-95 budget. Including salaries for about 25 employees, approximately $1 million goes into keeping the computer system up and running, while the remainder goes into software development and programming, budget officials said.
``We were at the forefront to develop this type of student information,'' budget director Forrest ``Hap'' White said. ``By doing it in-house, we had the expertise to write our own programs and develop our own software.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by PAUL AIKEN
``We have in place. . . what I think is the finest system in the
state and even in the nation,'' says John Alluisi, the school
system's database manager. ``It gives us an incredible amount of
information.''
KEYWORDS: NORFOLK SCHOOLS COMPUTER by CNB