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The first week of school at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools is officially in the books — and officials say it went smoothly. But there were also a lot of changes this school year, and adjusting to those changes led to some hiccups along the way.
At a Friday press conference, Superintendent Crystal Hill remarked on several major changes the district has had to navigate this year — from the statewide switch to the Infinite Campus student information system, to a new safety protocol.
“I was thinking about last year’s first week of school and this year’s. Last year went extremely well, but we did not have a lot of new,” Hill said. “This year, we have had a lot of new that’s happened.”
Even the press conference venue was emblematic of those changes — the former Parkside Elementary School building that was combined with the Dorothy J. Vaughan Academy of Technology this year, one of several student assignment changes approved last fall that resulted in new bus routes and buildings for many students.
Still, CMS officials say there were no major hiccups, at least not beyond what would be expected.
Chief Operating Officer Tim Ivey acknowledged there were “typical” transportation challenges, and those challenges were largely ironed out over the course of the week.
Morning on-time bus rates improved from 79.5% to 93% between Monday and Thursday, while afternoon on-time arrivals rose from 72.5% to 88.5%.
Officials did not give specific numbers on how many families have successfully signed on to Infinite Campus since the start of the week, but said they’re in a “good place” after staff worked through the weekend and late to help families register. Around 37% of families had successfully signed onto the platform on the first day of school.
Hill called Infinite Campus a “great platform” but acknowledged “glitches” that come with switching over more than 140,000 students to a new technology system — such as a small number of students who didn’t get a bus route or get assigned to the correct school.
“It would be different if those things happen in a bubble without the normal activities of school,” Hill said. “So you compound all of those things with the normal activities. We’re still enrolling brand new students to the district, so that just creates some complexities.”
Hill said work to continue improving systems would continue.
Meanwhile, CMS officials said they’ve already used the district’s new safety protocol, known as I Love U Guys, three times in the first week of the school year.
In all three instances, the schools utilized the “secure” command, which instructed staff to lock all outside doors and continue business as usual inside the building. It’s the command that’s used when there’s some sort of situation going on outside the building.
Ivey said the new protocol uses more specific language that will better convey the seriousness of an incident. Previously, he said, the term "lockdown" was used to respond to almost every incident — now it’s only used when there’s a serious situation or threat inside a school.
“Thus, in the case that we do have a lockdown, we know that this is a serious event happening on campus and it needs to be responded to in a particular way,” Ivey said.
Ivey said that in all three instances, staff followed the protocol “to the T” and said it worked “exceptionally well.”
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