Apps and Portals
I think it’s possible that the Williamson County School system is run by the Initech company from Office Space. Yesterday, finding a rare window of free time, I made the decision to treat myself to a manicure/pedicure. Because whatever else fails, by God let’s at least hold on to some semblance of elegance and grooming. As I found myself at the Brentwood Nail Bar, I kicked up a conversation with Andy who in addition to attempting to rehabilitate my mangled fingernails, was struggling to navigate the School Dismissal Manager. Andy was losing it as he could not access the new barcode because his login was no longer valid. His sanity dissolved during multiple calls to the school office. Neither of us had any idea the system had been “updated.” I left the salon not knowing whether Andy’s daughter had been released to her grandfather in the pickup line or if they would hold her overnight for lack of a barcode. I would love to help, but we have our own problems. 99% of which stem from a labyrinth of apps and portals.
How, oh how, have I come to be involved in this mess? I am simply a stepmother, and a reluctant one at that. Yet even I have been dragged into the waking nightmare that is parental school participation. It’s a place I’d rather not be. I am not sure it’s a place that should even exist. My already full inbox is flooded daily with correspondence from approximately 8-12 different school entities pertaining to three different children. Every morning, I receive an email from high school principal Mr. Keidel. Attached, are the day’s announcements. Since I do not attend this high school, I don’t give two flying figs about what goes on there. Unless you have been sucker punched in the bathroom or been caught inhaling battery acid, I don’t need to know about it.
I receive an email from Senora Gill written in both English and Spanish, with a fully detailed play by play of the day’s 50-minute Spanish 3 class. Every. Single. Day. And this goes on for almost every subject. You do the math. I am beginning to understand why women drink wine from their purses.
My School Bucks, Final Forms, School Dismissal Manager, Skyward, Athletic something or other… the list is endless. There are different platforms and logins to access grades, schedules, and dismissals. One login will not work for all. Some will be apps, some will be portals, and some will be websites. All will be worthless and impossible to use. None will provide any useful information. I am drowning in this crap.
We are also contacted daily for a constant output of cash. This is a public school; we enrolled the kids in this supposedly wonderful public school for one reason. It is free. And yet the fees are everywhere. We must locate and register for portals to be able to pay for the hundreds of school fees which again are supposed to be non-existent in the free education program we have chosen. I forked over a total of $1035.26 yesterday afternoon. For what, I am not entirely certain. AP tests? Yearbooks? Ransom? All fees are shared on a myriad of platforms and have a 24-hour window in which they must be paid. If the fees are not processed within this 24-hour time window, late fees will be assessed. We remain ignorant, because we delete all incoming emails from this arcane system. So, we will receive word two weeks later and owe an additional 2k.
It is impossible to complete the payment processes for the litany of required T shirts, uniforms, and activity fees. No, for that you will need to login to one of the 6 different portals, load the items into your shopping cart, and check out with a credit card. But you can’t check out because they have updated the system, and your login and password are no longer valid. You will need to call the overworked and under concerned school secretary named Barb for assistance if you can catch her while she is not out to a bathroom break. Barb will need to reset your login, but before that she must reconfirm that you are indeed a legal guardian of the child and allowed access. Barb will need you to swing by the school in person with your driver’s license and sign some paperwork. She will then be able to reset your login 6 weeks from now.
Or you can go through the app. For some payments, you will not be able to use the portals, you will need to use the app. The app and the portal are not the same and cannot be used interchangeably. You will receive no guidance as to which should be used for what.
There is an app for the school bus which should, in theory, show the bus location in real time. It does not. There is no method to determine whether the bus will be ahead or behind of the 7:42 AM pickup schedule. You will instead wait and wonder. Sometimes you will have the opportunity to watch the bus drive away as you run screaming down the driveway after it. In this case, no app or portal is needed. You will have to use the car machine to drive the child to the school yourself and contend with the carpool line.
The carpool line is a Hunger Games fight to the death. If your child normally rides the bus each morning, you will have no understanding of how it works. You will have to guess the rules on the fly. Rest assured that whatever guess you make will be grossly erroneous, thereby incurring the wrath of all exhausted mom drivers in the line and causing the security guard to put down his Starbucks, walk across the parking lot, and issue you a tongue lashing.
The My School Bucks app is different from School Cash Online. The forensics fee of $300 must be paid via School Cash Online. My School Bucks is used to pay for choir T shirts and school cafeteria lunch. But as all 3 kids take their lunch to school, we are confused by the negative account balance of $42.50. Apparently, My School Bucks can also be used as a secret slush fund for the chemical laden bargain brand ice cream that the smallest child is shoving into his pie hole every day. When asked, he said he bought lunch for another kid. When pressed further, he dissolved into tears and confessed to being a junkie. No wonder his clothes are tight. It occurs to me to cancel the My School Bucks app account immediately. But I can’t because My School Bucks also allows for the high school kids to purchase plastic bottles of water. And if they can’t purchase plastic bottles of water (even though they leave the house each morning carrying a $40 metal water bottle receptable), they will die.
Athletic forms of all kinds must be filled out in triplicate each year for a child to even sneeze in the direction of a field of sport. The forms include questions regarding height, weight, blood thinners and Parkinson’s medication. We have checked no for Scurvy. The only health updates we can report for the 16-year-old male child are that he is “always starving” and continues to clog the upstairs toilet. I filled out 7 different forms relating to mental health and parental approval for medical attention. If one of the kids turns up after geometry with an eyeball hanging from its socket, we do not mind if he visits the nurse. If someone breaks a leg in English whilst diagramming a sentence, by all means, call the paramedics.
And now for the extracurricular activities. We receive a minimum of 1 daily email regarding the after school cross-country situation. We do not need any further updates alerting us that he will be running. That’s what he signed up for. We don’t need a parent meeting, a follow-up parent meeting, or a social. We need him to freaking run.
To attend any of his running meets we need to sign up for and download the Go Fan app. The Go Fan app handles admission to athletic events (which you must pay for) and choir concerts / school musical events (which are free). For the debate team, which requires overnight stays out of town on weekends, we will receive no communication whatsoever. We can only assume he will been taken on a school sanctioned bus to a neighboring county for a tournament but we will never receive confirmation as to where he is, what time he will return or on what day. He may be debating or functioning as a drug mule. We will never know.
We received an email inviting us to attend the Fall Parent Open House. This is different from the email we received about the Fall Parent Meeting. The Open House invites us to come to the high school and walk through each child’s schedule, meeting each teacher, and inspecting the classrooms. This will occur from 6-8 PM on a Thursday evening. The same Thursday evening we already have plans to be anywhere but a high school gymnasium.
The Fall Parent Meeting will convene the following Thursday and is slated to begin at 6:30 PM. We did once make the mistake of attending the Fall Parent Meeting. It’s a mistake we shan’t make again. It began a full 30 minutes late and lasted another 2 + hours. We heard from the principal, various school administrators and counselors, and learned only that the one administrator possessing a PhD does not understand that you should never end a sentence with a preposition.
We will pay all fees plus the additional late fees. We will attend a couple of cross country meets, even though several begin at 9 PM on a Saturday night. We will suffer though the auditory hell of the high school musical and various choir concerts. We will volunteer to be the “mystery reader” for the 3rd grade. But we draw the line at apps and portals. The Hot Urologist and I have done our time. This shit’s on you.