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Janesville schools exploring online registration

JANESVILLE — Janesville public school parents may wonder as they fill out forms at registration this week: Why can’t we do this online and save everyone a lot of time?

The simple answer is that the school district does not have an online registration system. That may soon change.

Officials are working on an online system that could be in place in time to sign up for summer school 2010 and for the start of school one year from now.

That’s according to a brief mention in Superintendent Karen Schulte’s memo to the school board that is contained in the packet of information for Tuesday’s board meeting.

The district’s manager of information systems, Steve Schlomann, is forming an advisory group to study how to create such a system, said Sheryl Miller, district coordinator of public information.

Miller said that once the group has come up with a solution, it will be brought to the school board, along with any costs.

Board members, especially Peter D. Severson, have asked in the past why the district can’t have online registration for summer school. With the current summer-school system, parents sometimes stand in a long line in order to ensure they get their children registered for the more popular classes.

Officials have worked in recent years to make registration faster.

ON THE AGENDA

The Janesville School Board meets at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the Educational Services Center, 527 S. Franklin St. The agenda includes:

-- Approval of a new principal for Edison Middle School. Interviews of finalists for the position were on Friday.

-- Approval of a change to the policy on school volunteers, which includes this new language: “School personnel, not volunteers, will determine behavior consequences for students. No student will be placed in a one-to-one setting with a volunteer unless the volunteer is supervised by district personnel.”

-- Approval of a policy setting an employee code of financial ethics that includes this: “No person officially connected with or employed by the school district shall become involved in any business interest or transaction without disclosing such interest, and shall refrain from participation where a conflict of interest is found to exist.”

-- Approval of a new policy that specifically forbids bullying by students or staff.

-- Approval of a new policy that requires any threat to or by a student to be reported to the adult in charge and that the principal or assistant principal evaluate each threat.

-- Discussions on the 2009-10 budget, school boundary-line rules and the district’s naming-rights policy.

-- A report from a task force that sought ways to reduce expulsions and possible approval of task force recommendations.