MCHS will be replacing current student databases Skyward and Partners for Results (P4R), in favor of Sowerschool, the same company that owns schoology, a technology used for grades, assignments, and tests for students.

MCHS’s current way of doing attendance, analysis of grades, and sending out assignments for students uses three different applications. The hopes of the switch to Powerschool is to make a more user-friendly and convenient process for teachers, students, and parents.

The process of inputting data among three different applications was often very inconvenient and time consuming. Powerschools’ integration is hopefully a way to fix this long process.

“I think the decision to switch overall was to help streamline the workflow from a staff standpoint,” says Gregory Eiserman, principal of Freshman Campus. “We have quite a few different platforms and several of them are owned by Powerschool. This also allows a streamlined experience for parents as Powerschool owns Schoology and a few other platforms we use.“

Powerschool will hopefully be a helpful addition, as the hopes are a much more efficient platform for inputting student data, however, the biggest questions resulting in the transfer of student data from one system to the next.

“A significant chunk of student info has already been moved over to the new platform. That will continue through the summer as registration takes place.” says Eiserman.

Many parents of students have had a rough time navigating the numerous platforms, often having a hard time distinguishing where to register their students for school and sports, or even finding information about their students like physicals on file, or grades.

”The difficulty comes from having to go to different places,” said Erin Frommes, a parent of a student at MCHS. “Some are done in Schoology and some are done through Skyward. It would be helpful if school registration, sport registration, grades, school information and payment were all in one place.”

Even though the hopes are mainly for making a much more convenient system for parents, teachers are also hoping to have a beneficial experience from the switch.

“If I could take attendance in Schoology that would be great,” says Brittany Probst, English teacher for MCHS Upper Campus. “That would cut down on time for me having to log in to another system and then start up that system. If everything was just in one place it would just be so much more convenient and time saving.”