When senior Emma Donna was handed a singular piece of paper meant for her parents during her second period, she had no clue what to expect.
“I didn’t know when my teacher gave it to me. I was kind of confused because I used to get them in elementary school, but I haven’t gotten them in years, so I was quite surprised,” Donna said. “So once I was given it, I kind of just threw it to the bottom of my backpack, and it sat there for a couple weeks, and then I eventually just threw it away. I had decent grades, and so my mom probably would’ve just looked at it and got rid of it too.”
This year parents were given the chance to opt in on receiving physical copies of their students’ progress reports rather than relying on Skyward.
“There’s about 400 progress reports that I have to print. Physical copies used to be printed all the time in elementary, middle school. Parents sometimes will prefer paper copies,” data processor Laure Lara said. “Last year we didn’t really do it but this year they said for parents that opted in for the physical progress report, we can go ahead and print them and just give them, put them in the teacher’s boxes for the students to give to the parents.”
Being given a physical copy can sometimes help to urge students to keep a closer eye on their grades or communicate with their teachers.
“It’s the parents and guardians that choose to opt in. It’s during the time that either they can enroll or they can go into family access and do that, and so it’s up to the parents and guardians,” Lara said. “In high school, normally we don’t do that often because it saves us money on paper, just because it is provided in Skyward, they can see it, but we do have to honor those requests from those parents that do need one.”
It’s understandable to expect younger kids to need a little bit of help keeping track of their grades, and while it’s ideal for kids to take that responsibility as they get older, sometimes a little wake-up can be needed.
“I think having that physical copy is a reminder to kind of get grades up or keep them where they are, but you at least check your grades before forgetting about it. Talking about it now, I’ll probably go on and look at my grades,” Donna said. “My mom gets the emails about low grades or high grades, so she tends to check it every other week. When I was younger, they checked it more. I think now that I’m a senior, they check it less.”
With parental access to Skyward and consistent updates, student grades are set up to be well monitored. The physical report this year just poses as another level of supervision.
“I didn’t show them it, but my dad checks my grades regularly, so I guess it didn’t really affect anything, because obviously my grades right now were better than they were on my report so I just showed that to them,” sophomore Adrianna Papadatos said. “I think that they probably saw the option and they were like, ‘okay, I’ll just click ‘Yes’’. I think they might have forgot about it. Or just didn’t realize that they even signed me up for it.”
Parents have always had access to students’ grades and Skyward has added new options and functions every year, though such easy accessibility can have its own drawbacks.
“I think because they can check it more often they can be more overbearing about it. I like friends, and their parents are so strict about, like, if they even have like and 90, then they get in big trouble and they can’t do anything about it,” Papadatos said. “I think mine would’ve seen my 89 chemistry and been disappointed. And then I would have told them ‘Just look at my grades right now and it’s better.”
