Stephens Co. School System’s Technology Up-to-Date

At the Stephens County Board of Education’s work session last week, the board heard updates on central records and technology.

Student Data Coordinator Melody Copeland explained the responsibilities of central records, including enrollment, withdrawals, printing transcripts, report cards and more.

According to Copeland, there are 4,045 students actively on roll this school year and have enrolled 447 new students since the end of the last school year.

Copeland said their department is going paperless, which will save hours of time when looking for records and will allow for easier error correction.

“We are going paperless,” said Copeland. “All current students’ records are scanned into Infinite Campus so we have no permanent folders that are actively being used at the school level. Everything in those permanent folders are in Infinite Campus. Students records from graduates from 2001-2016 are scanned into Infinite Campus and we’re currently working on archived withdrawals and graduates from 2000.”
Technology Director Amy Garmon also gave an update on the technology department. She said they recently replaced copiers, lunchroom computers and set up new mobile carts at several of the schools.

Moving forward, Garmon said she is looking to upgrade the existing wireless.

“What I’m going to be working on for the summer is upgrading the existing wireless,” said Garmon. “With all these devices we’ve got, the wireless we’ve got right now that I just replaced a year and a half ago is getting inadequate for what we’ve got, so it’s time to start upgrading that. E-Rate will fund that, still have about $320,000 in E-Rate funding to spend on that.”

She adds that in the last year, they have made many improvements in the school system’s technology.

“This is some of the things that we’ve accomplished. We’ve went 100 percent online Georgia Milestone testing due to getting all these devices it’s made that possible,” said Garmon. “Toccoa Elementary has a mobile cart for every classroom homeroom. Fifth Grade Academy will by the end of this school year, probably within the next couple of months for everyone in their homeroom. Every classroom has an interactive board and we have gone from 373 Chromebooks to 2,587 in one year. So we have really accomplished a lot in the last year and we’re still moving forward.”

The board is having their regularly scheduled meeting tomorrow at 5:30 p.m.