A quick analysis of just our tech tickets showed we’re up 40% in volume this year from last (calendar year), and that doesn’t include many things like all the extra work to get middle and elementary schools to 1:1. So we’re very grateful to have Jeffrey Martinez on board as a temporary extra tech assistant. He’s getting started this week, and it will take a little time for him to familiarize himself with our schools and tech setup, but the extra pair of hands will take the pressure off us and allow us to start catching up again. There are things we’ve been deferring for months (or years in some cases) that we hope to be able to turn our attention towards in the coming months.
GoGuardian, the company that provides (amongst other things) our Internet filtering, released an app that allows parents some insight into their students' browsing activity and control over filtering and Internet access. Usually, this is just for “out of school” hours, but seeing as working at home is now potentially at any hour, we are loosening the restrictions to give parents more control. We have elementary school parents wanting to keep their kids more focused by blocking YouTube at certain times, and secondary parents that want to make sure the devices are off overnight, so we hope this tool is beneficial in various ways. We’re still just testing it with a few parents but will be announcing it more broadly very soon.
We’ve done a lot of work with KWRL to digitize their workflows, getting tablets to all drivers, and putting their timecards into the portal. While it is still a work in progress, I think enough is in place that they’ll be switching from paper over to relying on the digital timecards this month.