Students at Maple Ridge secondary will now be receiving their report cards electronically, joining the other five high schools in the district.
All the others made the change for first-term report cards.
School district assistant superintendent David Vandergugten says there are many benefits to distributing report cards online.
One benefit is to the environment.
“We have about 6,000 secondary students and each report card is about two pages. So there is a significant amount of paper that I believe is saved,” he explained, adding that not all students tell their parents the report card is waiting to be picked up, resulting in the shredding of those that remain at the office.
“It is a real waste of resources,” he said.
The other benefit is that parents will now have direct access to how their child is progressing at school.
With an e-report card, parents will get an email notification saying the report card is ready. They can log into MyClass, the school district’s parent portal, and check their child’s daily attendance and get a PDF version of the report card.
“So for me as a parent, it was seamless. I got the email, I logged in and I had my son and daughter’s report cards in 10 seconds,” said Vandergugten, whose children attend Samuel Robertson Technical.
Vandergugten also says there are no security concerns with this system as it is an encrypted site just like a bank.
“Even if you were sitting at Starbucks and someone was spoofing the network, they wouldn’t see anything because everything is encrypted,” he said.
Trevor Connor, principal of Maple Ridge secondary, will continue to print out hard copies of report cards for those who don’t have access to online resources.
And, he says, they will still have paper copies of everything. In the past, the school made two copies of each report card, one for the student and one to attach to their record. Now they only have to make one copy.
“Quite frankly, I really like signing report cards,” said Connor, as it was a chance for him, as an administrator, to talk with students.
“Historically, as an elementary principal and a secondary principal, it was a great chance to celebrate or encourage kids in some way and I don’t get to do that now.”