Thursday March 28th, 2024 7:32PM

Registering new students presents challenge to Hall County school leaders

GAINESVILLE – Hall County schools are readying for the start of the 2020/2021 school, not sure what the future holds, even as they grapple with the unprecedented closure of the 2019/2020 school year.

“Rest assured that we’ve got several teams working on the possibilities; our ultimate goal is to come back to school in August,” Hall County School Superintendent Will Schofield said at the conclusion of Monday evening’s school board work session.

One of the challenges facing school officials during this time of COVID-19 restrictions and closed school buildings is registering new students, whether they are kindergarteners entering the system for the first time or older students transferring into the system from elsewhere.

Tamara Etterling, Director of Student Services, told board members that registration for new students is a little different under current conditions and restrictions.  “Typically we register students in March and it’s over a two-to-three week period.  We are obviously not hitting that right now.”

The former policy of meeting new student families in person or online has been changed by necessity to an online encounter only, but with an addition.  “The difference is there is a virtual component to it now,” Etterling said.

She continued, “Parents do go online and they fill out the registration application and they upload their documents.  The second part…is they go to their…school’s calendar and set up a ‘virtual call’ with a person at the school.”

“That person then, through Zoom, calls them and they go over the application together,” Etterling explained.  “That person then has to show (to the school representative) their ID to prove that they are who they say they are.”

Etterling said the new procedure began just last week so the district is running later-than-normal in registering new students for the upcoming school year. 

“I was hoping by the end of May that we would have at least 300 kindergarteners registered,” Etterling said; as of Monday afternoon 191 students had done so.  Before classes resume in August the district’s goal is for 90-percent of incoming new students to have completed the online registration process.

She said a physical location for making an appointment to meet with families in person who are totally unable to register online is being developed.

Schofield said in previous years 1800-1900 students typically would be preregistered during the spring/summer registration period.   “By this time of the year, generally, we’d have 900 or so.  So again, we’re ‘behind the eight ball’ like everybody else.”

  • Associated Categories: Homepage, Local/State News
  • Associated Tags: Hall County Schools, hall county board of education
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