First Day Photos for 2008

On a whim, we decided to put a call out to the MISD community for some photos from the first days of school.

We have been pleasantly surprised by the response from parents and teachers submitting photos to share.

Take a look at some of the faces that should be reminder of why we are all here. Check out the First Days of School 2008 Photo Gallery.

Welcome to Infinite Campus

We are ready to introduce to the MISD community the Infinite Campus Parent Portal. A Web page dedicated to Infinite Campus has been created to start us off by providing FAQs, Campus Contact Matrix (who to go to with issues and questions), Reference Documents, and other related information.

The Infinite Campus Parent Portal Information page will be the dedicated location for updates, announcements, and future documentation as deemed necessary by the district.

We encourage parents to be patient as our teachers learn this new system.

The attendance site will be open in the Parent Portal on the first day of school (Monday, August 25, 2008.) There may be a delay of up to a week before actual daily attendance is posted to the Portal. This will allow for class leveling and schedule changes which occur at the opening of each school year.

The grade site will also be open on the first day of school. Again, there may be a delay of a week or two as schedules finalize and assignments are made and graded.

[Update August 22] Ok, so it would appear that with the new program, comes new problems. Here's what we posted to the Infinite Campus Info page earlier today:

We are experiencing some issues with Infinite Campus related to the volume of users. This problem is being addressed by MISD, Region 10 and Infinite Campus. We expect some continued issues and delays into next week.

Thank you for your patience.

Before people start commenting about how "bad the system is" or the "see I told you it wouldn't work" let's all take a deep breath and remember that Infinite Campus is very large program and we are a comparatively large school district. Let's allow for a reasonable amount initial glitches and issues while we all adjust to the new system.

Back-to-Back "A" Days?

We started to get some questions from a few teachers, administrators, and from the community who were concerned and/or curious about the back-to-back “A” days on the 2008-09 A-B Student Calendar. This calendar anomaly was actually done on purpose and here’s why:

• There are nearly equal number of A and B days scheduled in our 177 instructional day calendar.
• The A-B Student Calendar has 89 “A” days and 88 “B” days.
• The end of the first semester has double “B” days followed by two “A” days that were scheduled for final exam review and testing.
• The second semester begins on a “B” day.
• April 17 is the end of the 5^th six-week grading period.
• April 20 is the beginning of the 6^th six-week grading period
• The end of the second semester has double “A” days followed by two “B” days that were scheduled for final exam review and testing.

We hope this clears up any confusion on this calendar and demonstrates the consideration that goes into setting calendars that affect students, teachers, and the administration.

Related: You can also get your printable 08-09 District Calendar.