“It’s going to make things a lot easier,” said Lisa Bippes, registrar for the high school’s counseling department.

In that role, Bippes oversees students’ transcripts, courses and other aspects of academic progress. More importantly, she is in charge of students’ schedules. And it’s in this latter role that she says the new forecasting system is likely to leave the greatest impression.

In addition to the saving of time for both students and staff, the change will also mean greatly reduced paperwork for students, parents and staff alike, fitting in with the school’s commitment to green practices.

“The biggest change is that we won’t have to have all these volunteers hand-entering all of this,” Bippes said recently, sifting through the paperwork generated by the high school’s annual forecasting week. “It’s more accurate that way.”

The school opened up this year’s forecasting on April 3 with incoming eighth graders from Wood Middle School. Using a unique identity number issued to each student upon enrolling at any of the district’s schools, those students were able to simply log in to the district’s computer network through Wilsonville High School’s Web page. From there, they selected the appropriate courses, including those that are compulsory, from the online coursebook and filled out their schedules for next fall.

So far, the results have been promising, said Bippes.

“The kids took to it fantastically,” she said. “They really responded to it well because they’re so into computers these days”

Juniors entering their senior year went ahead with their forecasting on April 8, followed by sophomores and current freshmen. Prior to that, academic counselors Christine Lindberg and Alyson Leatherman met with all of these students in their regular English classes to discuss the coming changes.

For both, the move to online forecasting means they will have access to students’ class schedules, something formerly requiring a physical trip to the registrar’s office. In the past, Leatherman said, class changes initiated by students or parents would often pass under their radar, removing the opportunity to offer the student guidance about their choice.

“Just knowing we have the ability to see if they’re making changes,” Leatherman said when asked about the advantages of the new system. “You can identify something and say, ‘What’s going on here,?’ In the past, students would turn their changes in and we’d never see it.”

In addition, the new system, based as it is in the West Linn-Wilsonville School District’s central computer server, improves communication between counselors and the registrar.

“You get more academic input,” Leatherman said. “More input from the counselors to the students.”

Lindberg noted that in the past, communication between students and the counseling office came largely at the request of individual students. Now, she said, they can reach out to students before problems arise which could cause them to seek help on their own. And this is only the first year.

“It will only get more efficient,” Lindberg said.

One possible negative associated with the change is the possibility that some students may not have Internet access in their home. In addition, students’ parents may not be technically savvy enough to use the system properly, even if they have online access.

In these cases, Lindberg said, an old-fashioned paper and pencil will work just fine.

She also noted that worries about perceived inequalities were likely misplaced because of the greater influence counselors will have over students’ academics.

“What I’ve found,” she said, “is that it’s even more equitable this way in that even more people can get our advice.”

The transition was entirely staff-initiated and originated at the beginning of the current school year. Starting with discussion between the district’s counselors and IT staff, it grew into a larger, district-wide collaborative effort. And for that, Lindberg, Leatherman and others are proud.