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MyCCS replaces ParentConnect

By: Michael Wang <[email protected]>

Last year, sophomore Shataakshi Dube would access her computer frequently after school. Her objective, however, wasn’t to complete her homework assignments, to check her Facebook or even to email other people.

She was online in order to check her grades on ParentConnect. This year, though, her routine has changed. It isn’t because she cares less about her grades. Rather, myCCS has replaced ParentConnect this year and is currently only accessible to parents.

Dube said, “I went to the Web site to try to register and it said that my account was disabled. Then it said to contact the (Information Technology) department or something and so I emailed (the people in charge), and they said that they were having trouble and had to disable all the student accounts, and they didn’t know when it will be running again.”

However, Sue Moeschl, the director of Information Services and director of the department that was responsible for the implementation of myCCS this year, said, “Once we are confident we have (myCCS) working reliably and robustly, we will begin determining how we want to provide student access.”

Moeschl advises students to have their parents create them an account and use their parents’ access for now.

There are security issues involving registering for myCCS, because for students, their password is their ID number, but according to Moeschl, students share their ID number freely, and she didn’t want students looking at other students’ grades. She said, “I can’t give you a date (for when students will be able to register for myCCS). (We) want to have it really working perfectly where we have addressed all the little issues we have coming up. We have to have some secure way of making sure (students) are who (they) say (they) are.”

In addition, since some students are using their parents’ access accounts, they can view not only their grades, but also that of their siblings who are enrolled in middle school or high school.

“I have a brother, and I really wouldn’t want him to see my grades because they are private, but I wouldn’t mind looking at his,” said Dube.

There are benefits to using myCCS, according to Moeschl, because it has a better interface and more functionality than ParentConnect. She said, “MyCCS provides much more than student grades. It registers patrons for our emergency calling system. It also provides calendars, resources and eventually access to other useful functions and information.”

ParentConnect was not very modifiable. It required an enormous amount of human resources devoted to it, because the user name and password all had to be done manually. Moeschl said that there were a whole number of pencils on the left side of the ParentConnect screen, only two of which were functional.

Chris Cloud is the Carmel Clay Schools project manager. Cloud, CCS Technology Supervisor Terry Howell, CCS Database Specialist Nick Shutters and Moeschl are the core team that oversee the development of myCCS. As of right now, myCCS is in beta testing, which according to Moeschl is a term used when people launch a new product and have a lot of other people trying it, and those people are giving the people who launched it feedback.

“We are getting feedback on a daily basis,” she said. “(There are) little bugs we have to get fixed.”

“I hope they get it running soon, because I want to check my grades,” said Dube. “It is a feeling of desperation, because I really want to know my grades, especially in AP European History where we never get our quizzes back. Now I am in the dark.”

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