Laf. buys new data system

Lafourche students who wish to cut class will soon have a new obstacle to surmount.

Parents of absent students can expect an automated phone call minutes after class attendance is taken and submitted into Lafourche Parish Schools’ new web-oriented database once it is installed next year.

“If I have five phone numbers in the system for my child, it will call every one of those numbers until it reaches an adult,” said Julie Bourgeois, student accountability supervisor. “You’re going to save your schools several tens of thousands of dollars, because some of them are paying $25,000 a year to have that kind of ability.”

But the implementation of JPAMS, the system that is on pace to be installed by the 2012-13 school year, extends further than curbing truancy. District officials laud its streamlined grade-upload process and its ability to cull all of a student’s data into one place for use by parents, teachers, district supervisors and state officials.

“Rather than spending our time getting data, we’re going to be able to spend our time using data, and that can only be better for our school system,” Bourgeois said.

The school board unanimously approved the purchase at its Nov. 2 meeting. The system will cost between $530,000 and $791,000, according to the LPSB business manager.

Funding will come from the Medicaid, Infrastructure and Contingencies funds.

Superintendent Jo Ann Matthews said the database would cut down on personnel and time needed to meet state reporting standards. Disciplinary write-ups now take teachers more than a half-hour to complete, for example, but JPAMS will expedite this process and install all of the state-required information in the student profile. Reports can be filed with one click.

“(The state) is making it very difficult for you to stay on a homegrown system and manage all of the information that you have to send to the state department on a day-by-day, week-by-week situation,” she said.

JPAMS is one of several new systems the school board has installed or will purchase as it seeks to leave the district’s homegrown system, described by Information Technology Manager Ben Gautreaux as “antiquated and inefficient.”

Programmers spent months making changes to the district’s databases every time the state issued a new reporting mandate, Gautreaux said as he juxtaposed the situation with JPAMS’ automatic updates for all participating schools.

“It’s the easiest decision I’ve ever been associated with,” the IT manager said.

Lafourche already has purchased a new financial database. The payroll and educational personnel profile systems will be replaced in May. After JPAMS is implemented, only the child nutrition, time sheets and sales tax databases will still be based on the district-run mainframe.

The district would save $150,000 per year in maintenance costs once the transition away from the district’s mainframe is complete, Gautreaux said.

But the savings wouldn’t be reflected as such in the district budget. Separate systems purchased from separate corporations require separate maintenance fees. JPAMS will cost $100,000 per year, and Munis, the financial system, is $20,000 per year after full implementation.

JPAMS has spread throughout Louisiana. The Lafourche Parish School District is one of five jurisdictions that does not yet use the system, which is produced by Shreveport-based EDgear.

The transition away from the homegrown system also means discarding servers in lieu of web-based information hosting, which will soothe some stress in the event of a storm. When Hurricane Katrina forced school officials away from Thibodaux, there were concerns over the board being severed from the system.

Not any more.

“Even if we have to evacuate to North Dakota, we’ll still be able to make payroll, we’ll still be able to email our employees, we’ll still be able to do all of those things because now all I need is a computer,” Bourgeois said.

Becky Plaisance, vice principal at Bayou Blue Elementary School, sits in her office. The Lafourche Parish School Board approved the purchase of a new data program that will cull all of a student’s information and send it to state officials with the click of one button. ERIC BESSON