Education Matters US

Dist. 15 public documents can be seen online

Daily Herald
Saturday, Dec. 24, 2005

By Nadia Malik
Daily Herald Staff Writer

Everything from the teacher salary schedule to lunch menus to a full account of the budget can now be found on Palatine Township Elementary District 15’s Web site.

Ever since a discussion in October about disclosing more public information on the Web, the district has been working to rearrange its site.

“Anything that anybody could want to know on the district is up there,” school board President Scott Boucher said.

That includes negotiated agreements with the three unions the district works with, under the new “documents” tab on the home page, and information on improvement plans for each of the district’s 20 schools.

Much of the material has also been cross-referenced at various places on the Web site.

The same information has also been distributed to the Palatine, Rolling Meadows and Barrington libraries.

At the October board meeting, there was a dispute about whether the items should be put online, but board members eventually agreed the documents are worthy public information.

Although district officials can’t monitor who is looking at the materials, as they could when interested residents had to file a Freedom of Information request, Boucher said they still have the capability to track how many people view a certain section.

“It’s just so we know, so we can get a better feel for what people are looking at and if we need to make modifications,” Boucher said.

The district’s Web site, www.ccsd15.net, will also soon start including the complete packet board members receive before their meetings.

Curriculum
— detailed curriculum standards
— syllabus for each course
— textbooks and other purchased curriculum materials, by grade and subject
— distribution of assigned letter grades
— statement on commitment to intellectual diversity

Staffing
— contracts with key administrators
— CV for key administrators
— breakout of degrees earned by teachers, categorized by degree subject and awarding dept (ed school vs. others)

Meetings
— full minutes of meetings, taken by someone other than a school administrator or employee (I know you put meeting notes on your website now. They are always several months behind and they are usually just summaries instead of full meeting notes. Can you put notes up immediately with a disclaimer that these are unapproved and then change them when they are approved?)
— full description and budget information on all teacher in-service programs

Communications
— surveys: complete results, rather than carefully excerpted tidbits

This is a rather simple task given today’s technology. Electronic documents can be placed on the Internet with no software cost. The cost in personnel time is minimal. The time required is the time it takes to send a document to a printer, save a file and then copy it to a specified directory. In other words, it takes a few seconds of manpower for each document to be made available.

Non-electronic documents will take longer. These would require the use of a scanner, which can be purchased for under $50. The manpower requirements involve scanning the document first and then following the steps for an electronic document. A single document can be done in under a minute.

Both of these steps could be done on a going forward basis. The older documents could be placed on the Internet over several months as time permits. Volunteers, if desired, could do the scanning to speed up this process. The process should reserve the copy to the Internet as a Staff Function. That way you maintain security and consistency of the system.

To accomplish this there are a few steps that need to be taken. I will outline them below:

1. The Webmaster has to setup an FTP directory on the web server. This should be read only for the public and staff. Approximate time to setup would be 30 minutes to an hour.
2. Setup security for a limited number of staff members to have write access to the FTP directory. This can be done via an FTP program or preferably a network share. Approximate time to setup would be 1 to 2 hours depending on the number of people who would need this ability.
3. Download and install Cute PDF on the computers given write access to the FTP site. Approximate time to setup on each computer is less than 15 minutes. The links are specified below:
   • Download Cute PDF (http://www.cutepdf.com/download/CuteWriter.exe)
   • Download Converter (http://www.cutepdf.com/download/converter.exe)
4. Setup a process for ensuring privacy issues are maintained with the electronics documents.

I would also recommend the following as well:

1. Sub-directories under the FTP site to categorize the documents
2. Set up a default header or footer on all electronic documents that include the date and time it was last updated.