MiSiS came in like a wrecking ball

Posted on September 26, 2014 by Erika Salazar in News

Ray Reyes &  Erika Salazar

Copy Editor & Editor-In-Chief

MiSiS (My Integrated Student Information System) is LAUSD’s new student information system- a sort of combined online gradebook and attendance log that teachers can edit, and students and parents can view.

However, the changeover to MiSiS created headaches because it was implemented too quickly. Just weeks prior to the beginning of the school year, the counseling team had difficulties inputting student schedules because the MiSiS servers were unable to handle the traffic of the whole district, according to school Principal Alejandra Sanchez.

In order to have all student schedules done by the first day of school, counselors had to work on the programs overnight, when there wasn’t as much internet traffic.

“Counselors were working overnight. We were able to pull it off but it wasn’t perfect,” said Sanchez.

On the first of day school, there were about 150 pupils who were enrolled, but not on MiSiS. They hand to receive handwritten schedules. A month after school started, there were still 30 students in classes, but not in MiSiS.

Other schools had more severe problems. “Hamilton had 400 kids sitting in the auditorium without schedules,” said Sanchez.

MiSiS analyzes, manages, and reports student data. Its intention is to create greater transparency by allowing parents and students access to the same platform, with student support, scheduling, grades, and attendance all on one portal. After making sure that all the students had a class schedule, the counselors began working on students’ requested class schedule changes.

“It usually takes three weeks for changes to be made,” said Raul Grijalva, SAS counselor, “but this time it took a good four to five weeks.”

When the counselors tried to change a student’s classes through the program, they experienced many problems, the most prevalent one being that class changes would not save onto the system. It was “a lot of double work,” according to Grijalva, because counselors had to make the changes the old-fashioned way: by hand.

To actually change a student’s schedule, counselors had to search by the student’s last name in a transcript that did not list by SLC or counselor.

Despite these problems, the district is still making a hard push for a complete transition to MiSiS by January.

“If there are as many glitches with the grade book as there are for attendance, it’s going to be really problematic,” said PAM English teacher Judith Bridges.

The new system is not inherently flawed, however. During summer school, MiSiS was utilized for scheduling, with less difficulty than at the present moment. Assistant Principal Dr. Travis Brandy attributes the current problems with MiSiS to the greatly increased amount of traffic the program is seeing.

“During summer school we had some issues, but not to this level,” said Brandy.

Once the server and program bugs are resolved, MiSiS is expected to deliver what it promised.

“As with any new system, especially one for the second largest school district in the nation, there are new issues identified to resolve every day. You are telling us what to improve, and we are creating the fixes,” said LAUSD superintendent John Deasy in an email to LAUSD employees.