On another post Anonymous wrote:
"New Post please.
Can you help us solve a mystery? The school
specific pages containing calendars, news, senior bulletins and events
have disappeared. It has been reported to the hotline via email and
each resulted in only a return email confirming that the hotline got the
email. No answer yet. Several parents have checked numerous times and
only gotten the Discover pages for each school they checked. Selecting
calendar only gives you the district calendar or a calendar for all
schools by using the show/hide option. As little as 6 weeks ago
newsletters and announcements and senior bulletins and school level
calendars were available.
So, in answer to the question, "Can they make it any harder to be an interested parent?" I would say yes.
"
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26 comments:
Have you tried asking your Board member to look into the problem?
Not yet, she is new and did not want to distract her yet from pressing matters. That is the next step though.
Could you please contact me at webmaster@pghboe.net with information on what school you are referring to?
In August of this year we relaunched Discover PPS with enhanced capabilities that include calendaring, downloadable resources, and news.
From the district side, we provide and manage all of the other information. This model came about because a majority of our school sites were not maintained and outdated.
We have increased the accuracy and timeliness of content for a majority of our schools, but if you could give me more information or provide suggestions on this forum here, I would be grateful. We're always looking for ways to improve our web experience for the community and increase engagement.
Who is the webmaster? An open, honest, straightforward, helpful PPS person! Bravo!
Webmaster,
Individual demographics and test scores for each school use to be on the website. That information dissapeared.
The parents above may have been looking at an old link. School specific web pages are available on the discoverpps.org website, including a calendar of events for the specific school. Demographic information is located at the "Enrollment" tab. Are lists of staff members and their emails still on the pages?
Thanks Questioner, you REALLY have to look to find the demographic information. There used to be 3 years so parents could track trends. Are test scores listed? I didn't see them.
Test scores are listed but from 2011-12; better off going to the state website provided in the state profile thread today for complete up to date test info.
For info on previous years, unless something has changed you should be able to find it on the A Plus Schools website in the section on reports to the community.
A+ Schools does not match the State website test data info.
Sounds like the hotline is no longer being staffed.
It is pretty close on test scores but 10:10 was looking for prior demographics.
Where can I see a calendar with ONLY my school's information. PTO, PSCC, basketball games, performances, etc? What about my school's newsletter? How about a copy of a daily bulletin or the announcements that are read daily? A senior bulletin?
Mr. Campbell used a term at agenda review, "external stakeholder". Who is external?
The info in the thread has helped. I checked several schools and see a lot more on some sites than on others. For instance some schools actually have minutes of PSCC meetings under RESOURCES (Banksville, Brashear) but most don't.
The PSCC calendar has all schools on it.
Was there no letter or announcement on the changes to the website? Why wasn't anyone at the hotline trained on the changes?
The calendars are school specific if you check the box to hide district items. Can anyone find announcements?
it looks like some schools (Obama, Dice) give you the option of signing up for bulletins your will get via email. a really nice option. pretty efficient and friendly.
Questioner said...
The parents above may have been looking at an old link. School specific web pages are available on the discoverpps.org website, including a calendar of events for the specific school. Demographic information is located at the "Enrollment" tab. Are lists of staff members and their emails still on the pages?
December 12, 2013 at 9:53 PM
Yes, Demographic Information is included under the “Enrollment” tab of Discover PPS. These pages can be found the traditional way on our website by clicking the “Select a School” dropdown from the top of any district page or by visiting “Discover PPS”.
Some schools have Staff lists available in their resources section, but much like the old school sites this information is still lacking. Some of our old sites had very outdated staff lists, but a few schools kept them up to date. We’re trying to find a way to add this into our Discover PPS data-driven system so that this information can be accurate and up to the minute.
Anonymous said...
Thanks Questioner, you REALLY have to look to find the demographic information. There used to be 3 years so parents could track trends. Are test scores listed? I didn't see them.
December 12, 2013 at 10:10 PM
Luckily we now have 4 years of Demographic information available on the “Enrollment” tab. We’ve improved this over the first version of the tool that we released last March.
PSSA assessment scores for 2011-2012 are found under the “PSSA Data” tab. With the release of the new School Performance Profiles yesterday, we will be adding to school performance information on the site. Our goal is to give community members easy to read and historical assessment data, much like we’ve done with “Enrollment”. At the same time, due to changes with the state system, we need to report on Keystone Data as well, and need to find a balance of no recreating the wheel of the state’s SPP website.
Anonymous said...
Where can I see a calendar with ONLY my school's information. PTO, PSCC, basketball games, performances, etc? What about my school's newsletter? How about a copy of a daily bulletin or the announcements that are read daily? A senior bulletin?
Mr. Campbell used a term at agenda review, "external stakeholder". Who is external?
December 13, 2013 at 12:13 AM
If you visit your school’s page in Discover PPS and do not see the information you’re looking for please contact me at webmaster@pghboe.net and we can work together to find out why your school is not providing the materials you’re looking for and try to find a solution. Some schools may have their own system in place like e-newsletters, PTO Facebook pages, etc.
However, these sites are the responsibility of the school to maintain and/or provide. Some schools have most of the items in question, but none have daily announcements.
Anonymous said...
The info in the thread has helped. I checked several schools and see a lot more on some sites than on others. For instance some schools actually have minutes of PSCC meetings under RESOURCES (Banksville, Brashear) but most don't.
The PSCC calendar has all schools on it.
Was there no letter or announcement on the changes to the website? Why wasn't anyone at the hotline trained on the changes?
December 13, 2013 at 12:28 AM
Announcements of school site changes started March of 2013 with the relaunch of the district’s main site and its new internal Staff site. The Parent Hotline and internal Call Center have been trained on the district site materials and the district delivered Discover PPS data. School-specific announcements, calendaring or resources are not centrally supported since they are up to the schools to maintain, promote or support as they choose.
Questioner said...
The calendars are school specific if you check the box to hide district items. Can anyone find announcements?
December 13, 2013 at 12:33 AM
Announcements are in the “News” section. Some schools do not provide “News” stories.
Thank you for the thorough speedy response webmaster! You might also ask the hotline why it did not refer inquiries to you.
Also, another question for the webmaster- with grades 6-12 data combined it is difficult to compare high schools to high schools and middle schools to middle schools- can we also get 6-8 and 9-12 data broken out separately?
Just want to echo Questioner's 10:10 message of thanks to the Webmaster.
Also, a great big THANK YOU to Questioner for providing the valuable service of educating stakeholders through a (gasp!) blog!
Not sure where this belongs but I know teachers visit here. Can someone explain this record on a teachers certification? This is a teacher at my sons school who another parent told me was teaching without what she needed until this year. How can that be true? It looks like it's ok but I don't know how to read these. Could Pittsburgh have let her teach without what she needed?
Credential Issue Date Expiration Date Continuing Ed Status Credential Status
Instructional II Social Studies 7-12 (8875) 08/01/2013 Active Valid
Instructional I Social Studies 7-12 (8875) 06/01/1981 Active Converted
Total Record(s) : 2
Looks fine to me, assuming s/he's teaching 7-12 Social Studies.
It seems as though the person got a certificate in '81 and then took time off from teaching for all or part of that time.
You have to have 3 full-time teaching years AND a master's or equivalent coursework to convert to level II certification.
If you teach more than 6 FT years without converting, that's where you'd run into trouble as a teacher. It's a time limit on how much teaching you can do without additional education.
When you aren't employed FT (or are subbing, etc.) your clock isn't running. Teachers can choose, I believe, whether or not to count years spent at private or charter schools on that clock.
So, yeah, I'd say you're right, the teacher's fine.
Sure hope this parent friend is as concerned about TFA qualifications!
This teacher has been teaching at my sons school for the past twelve years.
They were likely under different rules having a cert start in '81 -- the rules change and people get grandfathered in.
If the state changed their status to Instructional II, they've done what they needed to do and their certificate had to be valid as Instructional I to allow them to change it to a II.
I'm not sure what the problem would even be -- the were and are certified by the state.
If there's a problem with the teaching of the teacher, this isn't going to be how it gets fixed, you'll have to go to the teacher and principal for that!
Perhaps when the decision was made to do "branding" where every school became Pittsburgh_______ is the reason that school specific pages were lost. They also took down school pages that were specifically geared toward teachers' assignments etc. Everything throughout the district is meant to be all alike.
It is a central control issue.
Blogger Questioner said...
Also, another question for the webmaster- with grades 6-12 data combined it is difficult to compare high schools to high schools and middle schools to middle schools- can we also get 6-8 and 9-12 data broken out separately?
December 13, 2013 at 10:23 AM
You're correct that this functionality isn't currently available. I'll work our developer to see if there are any opportunities to split this data.
Anonymous said...
Perhaps when the decision was made to do "branding" where every school became Pittsburgh_______ is the reason that school specific pages were lost. They also took down school pages that were specifically geared toward teachers' assignments etc. Everything throughout the district is meant to be all alike.
It is a central control issue.
December 14, 2013 at 6:56 PM
Some schools still have "Teacher Pages", but schools have been asked to move this content to Moodle by the end of the 2013-14 school year. Moodle is the district's learning management system. This system is better geared toward the assignment/support model than the Website Content Management system is.
Again, I can't stress enough that if anyone has any questions or suggestions, please email webmaster@pghboe.net
Thanks!
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