At the start of the school year, Irvington High School, among other Fremont Unified School District (FUSD) schools, faced software issues. During the past summer, FUSD’s new student information system, Aeries, launched to replace Infinite Campus (IC). Parents and guardians received instructions to activate and claim their child’s Aeries account via email. Specifically, parents were given instructions to utilize a platform called ClassLink to complete the mandatory password change. Unfortunately, there seemed to be many complications due to those who failed to complete the reset process before the deadline. Many accounts were disabled, with students and parents unable to access Aeries without it.
Before transferring the data from Infinite Campus to Aeries, FUSD needed summer school to conclude before, leaving late summer as the only viable option to make the switch. Afterwards, the IT department worked hard for two weeks to finish moving all student information to the new system before the districts began the race of building student schedules in time for the new school year.
In the past, the district was able to directly reset students’ passwords. However, this year, FUSD decided to allow students to reset their own passwords. The password reset process began last spring, but 30% of the students had not completed the mandatory process before returning to school for this calendar session.
Although parents were responsible for the password reset process, the message did not reach everyone and many mistakes and challenges appeared. “My parents got the email to change my password, but I didn’t know about it,” explained Jasmine Lai (12). “It was actually a Google-generated one, and after a while, I couldn’t get in until my mom recovered it.” While Jasmine had gained access before school began, many parents had not seen the emails or misunderstood their instructions. Students were given temporary passwords and were sent to the library, where librarian Ms. McAuley would help them go through the changing process.
Some students started off the year without their school account. In response, many teachers allowed those students to work with a partner and/or use personal email accounts. “Ms. McAuley and Mr. Fung were there helping. They had a piece of paper that explained the steps, and I managed to get it fixed,” Vivian Nguyen (11), a student who did not have access, described.
Ms. McAuley is always happy to help others and prioritizes students’ learning and ability to do assignments online. Because of the confusing instructions, she made her own flow chart and descriptions to aid students in need. She provided support to many students who were part of the multilingual language, ELD, and special education programs.
Teachers will soon need to also reset their passwords to reduce their security risks. “We’re all going to get new laptops,” Ms. McAuley revealed. “Then we’re going to have to join the new domain and reset our passwords. I’m a little bit worried about that.”
Meanwhile, after IC had gone out of business, FUSD searched for a new information system, leading to the choice of Aeries. However, transferring from one system to another can be a challenge, especially when it comes to sending data over from 35,000 students. Not everyone is happy with this choice.
Both staff members and students struggled with navigating Aeries. From difficulties with syncing to Google Classroom to utilizing its features, many realize that IC was the preferable system because of its simplicity. In contrast to IC, Aeries can only be accessed through the web and does not have a working app that can easily notify students about their grades. In addition, some found Aeries to be problematic and inconvenient because it takes a while to load.
As teachers were trained to get accustomed to its new mechanics in August before school began, Ms. McAuley believes that there should have been more time to prepare. “Mr. Fung taught us the basics of how to use areas, but even that was a little tricky because we didn’t have access to our students yet,” she said. Because there were no real students taking part in the training, the staff were unable to efficiently learn about grading and attendance.
Principal Hicks believes that although the two former information systems had gone out of business, Aeries won’t be going away anytime soon. “We’re all figuring it out,” he expressed. “It’s a massive information system with lots of things to learn and some very good tools, but it takes time to learn the tools, and the best way to do it is through practice.”
