Class Scheduling Software Glitch Sends Sad Message

When a nearby county school system sent children back into the classroom last week for another promising school year, students and staff were stymied by a massive glitch in the scheduling software they were using.  Thousands of Prince George's County Maryland high school students were left without a class schedule in some cases for the entire first week of school and beyond. 

Computers crash.  Software doesn't always work, I mean, come on, we've all used a Microsoft program a time or two in our lives, right?  But seriously folks, my concern and dismay was this:  What message does this send the kids?  

For a county that suffers from poverty, crime, and consists of a largely minority population where children often grow up feeling marginalized as it is, I fear this sends a message to these impressionable youngsters that those in charge are not sufficiently committed to them.  Kids need to feel secure and cared for, even high school students need the structure and safety of the school day. 

The news stories all last week focused on the software trouble itself and featured the superintendent of schools apologizing and saying they were working on the problem as fast as possible.  To me, this didn't seem to be sufficient enough of an explanation.  Also, I never heard anything about them reaching out to the students with explanations, options or apologies. 

The scheduling errors have been resolved, albeit, slowly, some schools resorted to the tried and true and often whispered about method of ... putting pen to paper and writing out schedules by hand.  GASP! HORROR!  I don't believe that technology makes everything better, as we have seen just in this incident, and I'm worried about the kids who spent the first week of a new school year being sent home after sitting in gymnasiums all day because of these errors which should have been caught weeks prior to the start of the school year not on the first day of class. 

I'm not at all suggesting blame should be placed but rather I think there needs to be some damage control in the direction of the students to increase and boost morale.

The school system is now reporting that the problem is almost completely resolved and this is good news, however, no one has addressed the toll this took on the students or how it changed their outlook or motivations for the new school year. I'd be curious to know those opinions, wouldn't you?

This is an original post to DC Metro Moms.

Stacy Kravitz blogs about her not-yet-school-age children and life in the suburbs with a husband and too many pets at The Fabulous Miss.S.