Manteca Unified is stepping up its use of electronic devices to increase student safety, reduce parental paperwork, and slash staff time.

Starting Monday, July 2, the paperwork associated with re-enrolling students can be conducted online through the MUSD Q Parent Connection app.

“It will eliminate parents having to fill out paperwork for each student they have enrolled,” Deputy Superintendent Roger Goatcher noted. “Instead they can electronically update, verify information and use electronic signatures.”

Besides saving parents time, it also improves student safety, reduces the chance for mistakes, and drastically cuts staff time.

The re-enrollment information covers a wide variety of essential information such as parent contact information, secondary contacts for emergencies, who is authorized to pick up a student, correct student addresses and such.

In the past the information for the district’s 24,500 students was done by hand and collected during the first week of school. It then had to be entered into a data base by staff. Goatcher said essential information such as updated or verified emergency contacts would not be in a school’s data base for as long as three weeks after classes start.

With the electronic enrollment, a list will be generated so the information is available before the first bell of the school year rings on Aug. 8.

The system eliminates the potential for mistakes to be made by staff entering the information.  

Assuming each written form takes as little as 90 seconds to either verify there are no changes or to be updated, the electronic re-enrollment will save at least 1,531 hours of staff time at school sites throughout the district. It will also save parents time by simply verifying if information on file is correct or inputting new information. And if they have multiple students it is an even greater time saver.

“We are anticipating a 50 percent reduction in time for families that participate in online re-enrollment,” Goatcher said. “Most importantly information accuracy will improve, and families will be smoothly transitioned to our Q Parent Connection system.”

For the rollout, the district will still provide hardcopy packets as in the past. High school students will receive packets over the summer as in previous years. Elementary students will receive hardcopy packets the first week of school. The hardcopy packets will also have instructions on how to use the online version for the re-enrollment process.

“We are confident based on the many requests from families last year that this will be a welcome option,” Goatcher said.

The district anticipates about 50 percent of the families or 10,000 households will re-enroll online.

For this year, high school students will continue to receive their class schedules during the round-up at the end of summer while classroom assignments for elementary schools will continue to be posted as in the past.

Goatcher said in future years schedules for re-enrolled students could be accessed online.

To receive their high school schedule at the roundup, returning students will need to complete the online orientation at the beginning of the upcoming school year. Details will be included when high school orientation information is mailed to homes.

The re-enrollment period via Q Parent Connection for all parents is July 2-27. An additional period for K-8 parents to use online re-enrollment will be available from Aug. 8-17.

Q Parent Connection has been used for several years at the 7-12 grade levels. It has allowed parents to be updated in real time with grades, various school issues and concerns as well as to receive emails from teachers among other things.

Goatcher said in future years it may be possible for other documents to migrate to an online platform including permission slips for field trips.

Information about Q Parent Connection and the re-enrollment process is available on the school district website at musd.net.

To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com