blog a bissl: US High School Parent Information

8. November 2016

US High School Parent Information

You remeber my blog: Why you need an organization to go to school in the USA …
   Today I’ll tell you about the miracles of information that you get as parent from your US high school. – Wie ein Gymnasium in Amerika die Eltern informiert.
   The example is from a school in Santa Cruz, Northern California, the Soquel high school. (You might not be able to access it from Europe, use a US proxy if you care.)
   Mind you, that’s a regular public school, nothing fancy, not an expensive private school.
Our daughter Carla is there now, and she enjoys it, see https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp3AMpsw0_YNx6po6UyCWwQ and https://www.instagram.com/carlajrn_/.

School IC card

So, let’s go.
First, turn on the proxy. With Firefox menu (the three lines), Settings (Einstellungen), Extended (Erweitert), Network (Netzwerk), Connection (Verbindung), Settings (Einstellungen), enter a proxy

as listed by, for example, S proxy. You may have to change the proxy later on, but that’s technique.

Now we get into the parent portal “Infinite Campus”, http://soquel.sccs.net/administration/infinite_campus. You’ll see

a lot of choices and instructions. (Don’t use the German “version”, translation is by Google.)
Now log in:

From now on you have four language choices: English, Spanisch, simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese:

We stick to English.

Just see the many choices you get in the left navigation frame:

• Calendar
• Schedule
• Attendance
• Grades
• Behavior
• Health
• Assessment
• Academis Planner
• Academic Progress
• Transportation
• Fees
• To Do List
• Reports
• Demographics

• Discussions
• Household Information
• Family Members

• Contact Preferences
• Notificatin Settings

“Household information”, “family members”, “contact prefernces” and “notification settings” tell the school, who and where you are, how to contact you. “Family members” for example are brothers and sisters, grandparents etc. – So the school can tell who’s ok to contact the student.

“Demographics”, that’s interesting. Carla appears female, not hispanic, and white.

You can specify demographics much further, to alls sorts of “Race(s)”, like Hmong, a group of people mainly from forest areas in South China. European “races” do not matter, not Sinti, not Jews or Persian, not Turks nor Italians.
Let’s leave this touchy subject. In a politically correct German school you’d never know anything more than boy or girl. It may be interesting what language the kids speak at home, if they are foreigners and or refugees. All that is hidden, due to privacy. It may be hidden to others than the specific parent(s) in California as well.

What home work does Carla have? As parent I might like to know that. Here a cutout from 26 detailed lines of assignments, still to do or past:

And how well does Carla do? I go to “Grades”. What a surprise!

That’s again just a short list out of some 25 “Recently Graded Assignments”. In Geomety she once even superated the 100% to 114.7%. Miracles happen. She had correctly answered an optional question.

Further down the courses are shown in a table, including the teacher’s name, which I omit in the screenshot here. Thank you, Ms. S.R.!
In Geometry the result looks like this.
S1 means Winter semester. S2 is still empty.

Let us now look at her “Academic Progress”. Where does she earn credits?

What else would you like to see?
   “Health” lists her vaccinations, “Attendance” days of absence: two days of unknown absence … Even tardyness is registered, once in “08220 Theatre Arts” [sic!] and once with “08290 Women’s Chorus”.
   “Fees” show a balanced 0.00, “Transportation” and “Discussions” are empty.

So let us step out as well. I “sign out”. – European schools have a long way to go into Internet accessability.
   And Carla prepares to select some tougher courses in Summer. •••