“Unlike last year we’re at an advantage in that we’ve had an actual school year to monitor and give the system a trial by fire if you will,” LAUSD spokesman Samuel Gilstrap said.
MiSiS caused chaos when schools opened last year, preventing access to student records that educators needed to schedule classes and enroll students.
Those problems persisted for weeks in some cases, stranding some students in auditoriums and the wrong classes. The American Civil Liberties Union later filed a lawsuit, forcing state education officials to intervene at Jefferson High School in South Los Angeles.
While district officials expect a smooth start to this year, they’re bracing for trouble.
As a precaution, the district will stop updating the system’s software for nearly a week before and after campuses open Aug. 18.
Every week, district techies update the problematic program about 100 times. Most technology companies update software four to five times per year, according to a July 23 memorandum from the district official overseeing MiSiS, Diane Pappas, to the school board and superintendent.
A command center for MiSiS will also be set up when school starts. The center will be responsible for coordinating efforts to fix problems. Last year, the district’s MiSiS hotline “abandoned” more calls than it answered, according to an independent report released last year.
But after performing well at the end of this school year — in part thanks to a new top-of-the-line server that can handle the strain caused by thousands of educators simultaneously accessing MiSiS — Gilstrap said the measures are just a precaution.
Highly touted plans for the system to provide parents with instant access to grades, however, are indefinitely postponed.
District officials promoted the feature when they rolled out MiSiS last year. But it’s still not performing up to expectations, causing officials to let individual campuses and educators continue using various software of their choosing.
And efforts to live up to promises are sure to exceed the system’s current cost of $133.6 million. That number is already more than five times its original budget of $25 million.
While the district’s bond oversight committee in May agreed to another $79.6 million, those dollars will be spent on restoring basic functionality over the upcoming school year. In the following year officials hope to begin adding long-promised features, but plans and prices haven’t been worked out.
“We’re going to select the option that best aligns with needs of teachers and is most cost-effective for the district; that’s as much as we know at this point,” Gilstrap said.
©2015 the Daily News (Los Angeles). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
