South High students can say goodbye to Orange Cards.

All Parkway schools have moved to Infinite Campus-based Responsive Scheduling to organize Academic Lab. 

“Responsive scheduling is a tool that Infinite Campus offers to help organize lab time and hold students accountable for where they choose to attend,” said assistant principal Jenn Sebold.

Sebold said, although the platform may be different, Ac. Lab will operate the same as before. 

“Teachers can request students to attend their mods up to one day before any given lab.  Students are then able to request to visit any of their own teachers up to when an Ac. Lab begins. Students will travel to the three mods just like they do with any other class in their schedules,” said Sebold.

Sebold said Responsive Scheduling, because it’s virtual, allows teachers to keep better track of where students are in case of emergencies and it helps with contact tracing for COVID. 

“This helps with accountability for how students spend their time. Parents and educators can view a history of where students travel for each mod throughout the year. In addition, if there is an emergency, we have a record of where all students are to locate them (if a parent calls and needs them immediately) or make sure they are accounted for (in case of fire, etc.) This also helps in the COVID era for contact tracing and safety.  Lastly, it takes the ‘middle man’ or the homeroom teacher out of the mix as there is no need to look that person up and deliver pink slips,” said Sebold. 

Math teacher Samantha Holt said she thinks Responsive Scheduling is a great idea.

“Responsive Scheduling is a great way for students and teachers to have greater ability to reach out to each other,” said Holt. 

 Holt also said the new process isn’t necessarily easier but it does help students plan better..

“t does provide greater accountability and I think that is important for helping students make good decisions about how to spend Ac. Lab time,” she said. 

However, senior Inas Mirza said she finds Responsive Scheduling to be difficult.

“I don’t hate it but I think it is annoying how you have to pick where you are going to go each mod and even if you aren’t going to go anywhere, you have to sign in your own Ac. Lab,” said Mirza.

Mirza said she’d rather have the old “Orange Card” method.

“I do prefer Orange Cards because they are a lot easier to use. You just write down where you are going to go,” said Mirza.

Lately, Mirza and other students have noticed Infinite Campus gets slow during Ac. Lab from all the requests, and it can be hard to sign up for mods.

“I had trouble signing into Infinite Campus and it was just very slow. However, I think the reason why it’s like this is because everyone is signing in at the same time and it can cause the site to crash every now and then,” Mirza said. 

Sebold said they are working with Infinite Camus to fix the issues.

 Even though there are some complications, Sebold thinks that it will be more friendly for students to use when signing up for Ac. Lab. 

“When students are able to log in and register for mods, I believe it will help us streamline the process and become more user-friendly,” said Sebold.