Posted Monday, August 20, 2001 - 2:18 am

Student-records computer crashes right away By Jason Zacher EDUCATION WRITER jzacher@greenvillenews.com

It was supposed to revolutionize the way student records on everything from test scores to disciplinary actions are handled in Greenville County schools

But when they flipped the switch on the revolution, Murphy's Law ruled.

The SASIxp system, which replaced thousands of file folders and bits of information stored on computers scattered across the school district, gives instant access to student demographics, attendance, discipline, grades, schedules, health, immunizations, emergency and parent information — when it works.

On the first day everybody showed up for school Wednesday, it didn't.

"When it comes to technology, Murphy was an optimist," said Bev White, the district's director of technology, alluding to the law that says "If something can go wrong, it will."

The SASI system, pronounced "sassy," was overloaded when guidance counselors trying to retrieve data on the district's 61,000 students went at it all at one time Wednesday morning. It crashed for about four hours, creating long lines for students who didn't have class schedules and headaches for guidance counselors, who had to retype the information.

"There was a lot of frustration," said Linwood Floyd, guidance director at Southside High. "We had the students in a lecture hall not knowing why they didn't have schedules."

The software is being used in public schools statewide beginning this year and was paid for by the state.

The outage stemmed from a hardware problem with the server at the school district office that's responsible for keeping all of the district's student records. Schools needed access to that computer so they could enroll students.

Even if the district's system goes down, each school has its own database, so no information was lost in the crash. Every night, the central computer, the one that crashed Wednesday, backs up the school computers and updates the district's records. That data is backed up again by another computer.

The central district computer is critical for enrolling students because guidance counselors can instantly have a copy of a transfer student's transcript from another school.

Guidance counselors also can see instantly how many students are in a class, to prevent assigning too many. Floyd said doing student schedules by hand could take up to 30 minutes — a long task when 75 students are waiting for a schedule like at Mauldin High on Monday. The new way is much faster, she said.

"That (crash) was not fun at all," said Sheryl Taylor, principal at Eastside High School. "The scheduling was an inconvenience, but attendance was the most critical thing."

That's because the district will do its first official enrollment count next week, which will determine which schools will gain teachers and which ones will lose.

Barbara Teusink, director of technology at the state Department of Education, said SASI also will help the state collect information from the districts quicker. With new system, she could have collected this summer the information the state needed for high school report cards in 10 minutes. Instead, it took several days.

Teusink said she doesn't know how much the new system cost because the state purchased SASI along with several other pieces of software.

Even though the system puts all student records in one place, the records remain confidential and safe, White said. The computer is not accessible from the Internet, and only certain district employees, like some district staff, principals and guidance counselors, have access.

Even they have limited access to the system. Guidance counselors have access only to student schedules, for example. Teachers don't have access to the system now, but if they get passwords in the future, they'll be able to look only at information about their classes.

The SASI system replaced the Osiris system used throughout the state for more than a decade. Student schedules were recorded in the Osiris system this spring and sent to the company that created SASI for conversion. That conversion also has created some headaches during the past several weeks.

Greer High Principal Marion Waters said Monday there "were still a few bugs in the system."

Prophetically, he said the real test would be Wednesday — the day the server crashed.

http://www.greenvilleonline.com/news/2001/08/20/2001082010696.htm

-- Anonymous, August 20, 2001