It aims to fundamentally change the way parents, teachers and students at Duval County Public Schools communicate with one another.
In a press conference Thursday morning at DCPS headquarters, the school district unveiled "OneView", an online portal that will offer access to all kinds of school-based information pretty much anytime they wish.
The program - which received a start-up Quality Education for All grant of $6.1 million on top of the $5 million chipped in by DCPS - will allow parents the ability to keep up with their kids' grades and attendance on a daily basis as well as access to other kinds of important data, resources and services.
DCPS Superintendent Nikolai Vitti says this program is a game-changer for parents wanting to keep in touch with teachers and administrators about how their kids are doing, especially those without another spouse in the picture or who are so busy that they can't find time for face-to-face meetings.
"Every parent wants more information about how their [children] are doing," Vitti said after giving his presentation. "They want better access to their teachers and administrators. This portal system does that."
Teachers and administrators will be able to use OneView to give parents and students homework and test results as well as give teachers the ability to email students and parents about attendance and progress reports.
Each user - be it a teacher, a parent, a student or an administrator - will have a personalized setup that gives them faster access to data, according to Vitti.
"This is something that will help all parents, regardless of socioeconomic background or zip code," Vitti noted.
The OneView portal will go live sometime in July. An app for smartphones is in the works, but that will likely not be ready until sometime in late fall after the school year begins, according to Vitti.
The program itself was designed through Microsoft via a pilot program that was tested by students and teachers at DuPont Middle School.
DCPS is also now offering free Microsoft Office 365 access to parents and students on up to 5 devices and will now sell refurbished laptop computers at a very low cost - possibly as low as $50 per laptop - starting sometime in August.
Those laptops are ones the school system retired in favor of newer devices and will likely be sold to start with on a first-come, first-serve basis for students.
School officials say it's possible that laptop sales could be prioritized in the future so that students classified as in need would get them first.
Click here to learn more about OneView.
