School Office Improvements
Welcome to the new school office improvements forum. We recognize that your work is important on many levels but most particularly, your relationships with the students, staff and community stakeholders in your school. However, we also know there are many things we also ask of you that are important for the continued operation of the board, like accurate data entry, financial procedures, and attendance. The purpose of this forum is to seek out ideas on streamlining your administrative work, making it easier for you to do your jobs well and enabling you to serve your school better.
This isn’t just a survey – this area will be open as a pilot for the rest of the school year and we would ask that you consider submitting a specific idea, and coming back to vote on the ideas that others have offered. This will help us not only identify ideas, but gain your feedback on the ideas that are the most important. The more specific and constructive you can be, the better. For example, providing a suggestion to find a way to collect payments electronically would be more helpful than a suggestion to provide general training.
As always, please ensure your comments are positive, constructive and respectful to your colleagues.
Thank you!
17 results found
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Full Potential of Family Room
I apologize if this is in the works as I did hear that My Family Room has the capacity to do at least part of what I am presenting. The French Catholic school board uses an on-line payment platform that not only allows the parent(s) to pay for activities through the system but also sign permission forms, etc.. Nothing goes through the teacher or the front office - milk, pizza, field trips, electronics use sign off. All transactions go through the payment system which alleviates the handling of paperwork and cash/cheques going through the teachers and front office. Banking processes…
4 votesHello,
Thank you for your suggestion! You are correct, My Family Room does have the capacity to support online payments as well as some portions of field trips.
This is being taken under review for increased capabilities in future versions of My Family Room.
Thank you.
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My Family Room parent information
Very few parents will update their contact information in My Family Room. They will more often email, call or write the change on the verification sheet. It would be so much easier if we could just go into PowerSchool and make the change instead of logging in to My Family Room to make the changes and then remembering to go back the next day to make sure everything is correct in PowerSchool. We find that once parents are registered in My Family Room they never go back in to check their information.
8 votesHi Pamela,
Excellent suggestion, we will take this under review for future versions.
Thank you,
My Family Room Support
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Online Payments
With the Board encouraging parents utilize the online payment system on MyFamilyRoom, it would be really good to see a program that does not have an upload user charge. I always try to encourage parents to order their milk/lunch online but I continue to receive negative feedback from parents regarding the upload fee.
2 votes -
Online Payments
With the Board encouraging parents utilize the online payment system on MyFamilyRoom, it would be really good to see a program that does not have an upload user charge. I always try to encourage parents to order their milk/lunch online but I continue to receive negative feedback from parents regarding the upload fee.
4 votes -
My Family Room Registration
Is there anyway that my family room includes the second parent information and ask who the child lives with and who has custody on their registration form?
13 votesThis is a great idea and will be considered for future upgrades of My Family Room
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Need ability to edit an online event response
It would be nice if we could edit an event response submitted online - ie. if the parent forgot to choose another option on the form
3 votesThank you for your suggestion. We will take this idea into consideration for an upcoming release of My Family Room.
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Online pmt system - need for partial refunds
Need to be able to do partial refunds. e.g., today I am writing 43 chqs at $50 to parents due to school having to shorten their Ecole de Neige trip to 2 days from 3 due to Snow Day/bus cancellation. Also, some field trips offer partial refund for admittance only (not the bus portion) if kids cancel last minute, just cause.
1 voteThank you for your suggestion.
This will be a consideration for a future release of My Family Room.
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Online payment system - add home room teacher name to list of fields in event views
Having the home room column is good, but it would be also useful to have the home room teacher's name displayed as well - this would help greatly for organizing hot lunches, for example
3 votesThis suggestion is under review.
Thank you for your idea.
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Online pmt system - need automated reporting for teachers asap pls
Teachers need access to timely information about which students have returned permission forms and payment for athletic events and field trips through the online payment system. Automated reporting would address this need.
3 votesThank you for your suggestion.
We will consider this idea for an upcoming release of My Family Room.
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Access to HR Staffing Information
Working for a school with over 150 employees it is sometimes difficult to keep track of our staffing FTE and LTO's, sick leaves etc., It would be helpful to have access to current staffing information available through HR. This would support our work in keeping UCARRIS accurate as well as Power School staffing up to date.
7 votesPlease contact AskUCHR with this request.
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Office Admin Protcol Hand Book
A living document that makes it easy to find information pertaining to our job which would create a more standardized way of doing things across the board. Including such things at attendance procedures, retention schedules, start up forms, etc.
23 votesThis will be part of our School Office Manager’s portfolio. More information to follow in the coming months.
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PowerTeacher Attendance notification to show that they have completed their attendance.
There should be an indicator in Power School so the attendance clerk can see clearly if a teacher has completed their attendance.
2 votesWe have completed a pilot of the Hall Monitor app with Touch Attendance at 13 schools this Winter-Spring. It has been very successful and we are planning a full launch of the service in the 2017-2018 school year.
Some functionality you can use in PowerSchool to track attendance taken by teachers will be addressed for school office staff.
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Notification when absences posted on My Family Room
Can we have an email notice or an alert of some kind if a parent inputs an absence or early pick up in My Family Room. It takes several steps to check this in our Dashboard site.
31 votesThis enhancement has been requested through the My Family Room UserVoice site as well. We are aware of the need for school office staff to have notifications when parents submit absence and late notes through their My Family Room accounts.
We will be considering this improvement with the next major release of My Family Room in the next 12-18 months.
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Media Release Information
The media release forms that are sent home when a student first arrives to our Board are completed and supposed to be in effect for that student's career with our Board. Could this information be entered at the Elementary level into PowerSchool so it would follow the student? In the transition to that possibility, could the forms be sent to the secondary school so they do not have to be sent home again?
12 votesThis request has been made through the My Family Room UserVoice site by MFR parents.
This is under consideration for a major release of My Family Room.
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The number of forms that are sent home to parents need to be looked at to see if there is any duplication.
One area I see that is a duplication are the safe arrival forms and the verification sheets that are sent home. I do not believe we need both since all the information is on the verification form which can be checked by the parent/guardian. I believe there might also be a duplication concerning sports forms as well.
5 votesThis is a wonderful suggestion. It is expected to be a part of the School Office Manager’s new portfolio.
More information to follow at a later date.
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Office 365 Training for School Office Staff
Teachers have enjoyed Tania Mason showing them the great things O365 can do. It would be great for Office Admins and Assistants to get dedicated time to learning the O365 and how it can be used in the school.
31 votesThis is a great idea! We will be planning some training opportunities for school office staff.
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School startup forms online
Give the parents the ability to review and update the school year start up forms without having to send paper forms home.
14 votesComing Soon!
This feature will be available after the full release of the new My Family Room Online Payments.
Schools will have the ability to post forms out to parents in My Family Room. Parents with My Family Room accounts will be able to provide consent online.
Stay tuned to updates on this planned enhancement.
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