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                                              Parent Portal Guidelines and System Requirements

Note: If you are having issues logging into the portal, please contact the Chester Academy Main Office for assistance at 845 469 2231 for such questions. For any/all questions of assignments in the portal, please contact the teacher directly. If you do not get an answer, please contact the Guidance Office or the school secretary for such questions. Thank you.                                                                               

The district is very excited to provide the SchoolTool Parent Portal to our district's parents and guardians in an effort to continue to help communications between home and school. We realize that parents and guardians lead increasingly busy lives. Having the ability to get more timely information on your student(s) progress in school helps not only parents/guardians, but also the rest of the stakeholders including teachers, administrators and the students themselves. For this reason, we had made a commitment to have the Parent Portal fully available for stakeholders by the start of the 2012-2013 school year. Here is the schedule we have created in order to meet this goal. This goal was achieved and so we added the following additional goals...

2014-2015:  In 2014-15, grade 3-5 teachers at Chester Elementary School (CES) will be trained to begin using the SchoolTool Gradebook / Parent Portal. CES Principal Ms. Walsh spoke to her teachers in these grade levels and it was decided to begin use of the Gradebook for 2014-15. Please note, CES faculty in grades 3-5 will be trained in September 2014 to begin using the Gradebook and Parent Portal. As this is a first year rollout at CES, grade 3-5 teachers will be given the choice of which assignments they would like to add to the Parent Portal. The SchoolTool Gradebook had not be available to elementary schools in past years. Now that it is an option from SchoolTool, it was decided by CES to have grade 3-5 teachers begin to use it.

* NOTE: several area districts have opened up the portal to give students a similar "view only" access account to the Parent Portal. These districts feel that it is helpful to students to see how they are doing on assignments in their classes. We will discuss this possibility this year. If you feel that this would be helpful, as other districts in the region have already done, please let us know.

2013-2014:  As we have been communicating to parents and community members for over a year, as of 2013-2014 reports will not be mailed home from Chester Academy. This is part of our district effort to "go green" (paperless). All report cards and progress reports will be accessible through the Parent Portal. If you have not yet signed up for Parent Portal please do so during the summer. Signing up for the Parent Portal will also allow parents/guardians to see assignments added by faculty to your students' Gradebook on a daily basis. Parents/Guardians can stop by the Chester Academy main office to pick up a Parent Portal information & sign-up packet.

2012-2013:  On October 22, 2012 we were able to make an agreement with our faculty to open up the Gradebook module of the Parent Portal for 6-12 grade students. We are very excited about this next step in the process to help parent/school communications!

2011-2012:  By the end of the school year, all parents who participate will be able to gain accounts for the Parent Portal in order to see all reports that are mailed home. We have been working towards this goal, following these benchmark dates:

*  December 2011- A mailing went home to all parents of Sixth and Ninth grade parents/guardians explaining the Parent Portal and including the sign up worksheet. We held several parent evenings at Chester Academy to collect the sign up worksheets, with photo-ids shown for security purposes.

* January 2012 - We completed all necessary steps in our School Management System (SchoolTool) to create/open the Parent Portal and to verify parent contact information included on the sign up worksheets submitted during the parent evenings. The Parent Portal was opened up for all Sixth and Ninth grade parents/guardians who chose to participate. As forms were received and verified, parents/guardians began receiving emails with their temporary passwords to start accessing the portal.

* February 2012- During February a letter went home to all parents of Seventh and Tenth grade parents/guardians offering the same service. Two parent evenings were again held at Chester Academy. As forms were received and verified, parents/guardians began receiving emails with their temporary passwords to start accessing the portal.

* March 2012- Our goal for March is to next mail home Parent Portal information packets to all parents/guardians of Eighth and Eleventh graders. Two parent evenings will again be held at Chester Academy. As forms are received and verified, parents/guardians will begin to receive emails with their temporary passwords to start accessing the portal.

* April 2012- Our plan for April is two-fold. First, we would like to start opening up some of the grade levels at Chester Elementary School for parents to be able to see reports mailed home. Three grade levels will be chosen and Parent Portal information packets mailed home. Secondly, we will continue to investigate other modules.

* May 2012: Three more grade levels at Chester Elementary School will be chosen and Parent Portal information packets mailed home.

* June 2012: The final grade levels at Chester Elementary School will be selected and Parent Portal information packets mailed home. With this, we will have achieved our goal for this year, to open all grade levels for the following school year of 2012-2013.

Technical & Informational Notes:
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1. Parents should not share their password with anyone and should not set their browsers to auto login to the portal. Please see the letter sent home for more information and all rules explained.

2. Stepparents or guardians that do not have legal custody of a child will not be granted parent portal right unless a copy of legal documentation is attached to the Acceptance Form.

3. If you have a third-party firewall installed on your computer, such as McAfee or Norton Symantec, etc., you may need to configure this firewall software to this website. Please contact your software vendor if you encounter problems accessing the website or for further information.

4. If you are going through a proxy server, you may also have to enable Secure Socket Layer (SSL) in order for the page to display.

5. Security features of the Parent Portal include:

    A. Three unsuccessful login attempts will disable your Parent Portal account. 
    B. In order to use the portal again, you will need to contact Mr. Ed Spence, who can generate a new temporary password for you.
    C. You will be automatically logged off if you leave the Parent Portal web browser open and inactive for a period of time.
    D. All attempts at logging into the system are recorded and monitored.

We hope this information is helpful to parents/guardians. Please contact Mr. Ed Spence with any questions or concerns. Thank you.