Sugar House schools offer new online resources

More and more of our daily lives depend on the Internet these days, and Highland High, along with the rest of the Salt Lake City School District, are keeping up with the times by offering some new online resources for students, parents and teachers.

Highland now offers its own online courses so students can more easily juggle their schedules without having to enroll in outside online programs. Students can take up to two credits of their choice this year through Highland High Online, free.

“We have kids with lots of different interests and lots of demands on their schedules,” Principal Paul Schulte said. “It’s another resource to add flexibility.”

Highland High Online is part of a statewide response to a new law that requires all Utah high schools to offer their own online courses. Students are not required to take these courses, and are still allowed to choose outside programs if they wish, but the in-school options have to be made available to them.

This new arrangement benefits students and schools alike. Because the in-school online programs have no additional cost, and students can use their school computer labs instead of having to get their own computers and Internet connections, students of all economic backgrounds can take advantage of them, District Secondary Education Director Kenneth Grover said.

“We hope it stays free,” Grover said. “Certainly it has been a great asset for our community.”

When Highland students are taking online courses directly from Highland, their counselors can keep better track of them and make sure they have what they need to graduate, Schulte said. It always makes him a little nervous when his students use outside online programs because the risk of them missing a requirement is so much greater, he said.

The new state law requires schools to allow students only two online credits this year so the schools can ease into the program, but each successive year one more credit will be allowed. The program will cap at six credits in the 2016 school year, allowing students to take a full course load and graduate with four years of online classes only if they wish. Despite the current limits, exceptions can still be made for students who are on track to graduate early.

Registration for Highland High Online classes is closed for now, but the district plans to open it again for spring semester. Course lists and registration materials are available online at www.highlandhighonline.org.

Another online resource now available to students, parents and teachers is Powerschool. Some schools have been using it for a while, but as of this year, Powerschool is the official online school access portal for the entire district. Parents can check on their students’ attendance by logging into Powerschool on their school’s webpages. Teachers can use it as an electronic gradebook that parents and students can view directly.

“Children aren’t always honest about how well they’re doing in a class, or they may not understand how well they’re doing in a class,” Uintah Elementary Principal Shauna Carl said.

Teachers can also post announcements and other information parents need to know about school activities, information that frequently doesn’t make it home when given out in paper form.

The schools have had other similar online access resources before, such as Highland’s ESIS program, but Powerschool is a lot easier to use, Highland Principal Paul Schulte said.

“I like it better, personally,” he said.