WASHINGTON — A straight-A high school senior showed up on the second day of classes to find his name was not in a new computer system and had no class schedule.
It happened in Fairfax County, and the school district is apologizing.
The student’s mom, identified only as Linda, told NBC Washington that she kept her son out of class on the first day at Centreville High School so he could visit a college.
“We wanted to make sure that he had experience of what college in session at a big school was like,” she said.
Linda called her son in absent for the day, but when he went to school the following day, his name was not listed in the new student information system.
“It boggles my mind how he could just be dropped like a hot potato,” Linda said.
She was told it might take up to a week for her son’s information to be added back into the system, and that’s a setback for her son.
“When you start AP classes you have assignments right away, and so when he came home he could not see some of his teachers’ assignments because he was no longer in their system,” she said.
In response, Fairfax County Public Schools said by regulation, students who miss the first day of class are marked as “no shows” even if those students are expected to come at a later date.
“The new student information system removes ‘no show’ students’ class schedules,” the district wrote in a statement. “Schedules are not ‘lost’ and those students are not disenrolled.
Once a student comes to school, the class schedule is reentered into the system. “We’ll be working with the vendor to make future improvements in the system,” the district said. “We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused for any of our families.”
The Loudoun County school system uses the same computer system. NBC Washington reports there have been no widespread problems with it in that school district.
