Above: View of Southborough from Neary School. (Photo by Beth Melo)
It’s time for another open thread. What’s on your mind this week, Southborough?
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I’m wondering what everyone’s opinion of the new online school directory is? Traditionally and since conception of the directory, parents of school aged child who attend public school in Southborough have been giving a yearly choice to sign up to be listed in the SOS directory which has been printed in booklet form once every school year. Usually, a form is sent out in the spring to be filled out with names of parents and children, ages and grade of children and contact information. This has proved to be very helpful, particularly for younger kids who are trying to make new friends. The task of pulling it all together, I’ve heard and don’t doubt, is extremely time consuming. So this year, those who are involved with SOS decided to use an online website created specifically to alleviate the troubles involved with publishing a school directory. So far so good, right? The problem I have with this plan is that a step was missed. There was no sign up for this. SOS has uploaded last years directory already, without asking anyone’s consent. So, anyone who was in last year’s directory, all of your information is has now been given to a website called myschoolanywhere.com. How many of you are aware of this? I found this out while at curriculum night at Trottier. An SOS representative was there, in the lobby along with others who were selling/informing etc., to answer questions about our new online directory. She did not have any hand-outs with information about the website, she did not have any sign up sheet. When I inquired about signing up she told me that everyone has been registered with the website already, that she took last years directory and put it all on the website. When I said that I hadn’t giving permission for that, her flippant response was, “So hire a lawyer and sue me.” Am I wrong in thinking that I really should have been given a choice as to weather or not I want my information given to a website owned and operated by…????
I think I would be contacting the Superintendent as this is essentially a school function as well as the head of SOS. They have no right to publish information on you without your consent. With all the identity theft that goes on all the time, you would think they would be more careful. The person at the open house should have been more respectful and had a better response. She was inappropriate at best.
I would hope that you are forwarding this information to the Superintendent, Southboro School Committee, and whoever the head of SOS is. This is inexcusable. Wouldnt it be great if you took whoever this woman is up on her response?
Art,
I don’t think Beth D was accurate. While the raw data may have been uploaded, I understand that it’s inaccessible and will remain so until each individual authorizes their own info to be published. The data is secured and as I understand it simply cannot be downloaded. That said, every bit of electronic communications is vulnerable–and for that matter, a print directory can be photocopied or scanned and distributed at will.
At my initial writing, I could only be as accurate as the terse conversation I had with the SOS rep on curriculum night was. Had there been more information forth coming, I would have been better informed, of course. Call me old fashioned, but I would have liked to have known what was happening with the information I trusted SOS with, for the explicit purpose of a printed directory, before anything other than that purpose went down. I understand that the active members of SOS honestly felt they were acting in the best interest of everyone, only they forgot to ask everyone else how they would feel about it. I would have preferred to have made the decision myself as weather or not I wanted my information forwarded to a website that was unknown to me. I understand that the SOS is trying to be green and so there was no sign-up sheets or informational hand-outs. However, sometimes, when a transition from old to new happens, a little bit of each needs to be incorporated for a smooth transition.
As it stands now, we are still waiting for more information. Hopefully it is coming soon and everyone will have a better understand of how myschoolanywhere.com works and the advantages this website has to offer.
Beth-
Information has been available on the SOS website and has been provided in email distributions to those parents who have provided their emails since the beginning of school. This was more of a pull campaign versus a push campaign given the limited bandwidth of the few volunteers that support SOS. We would love the extra help so feel free to volunteer your time and thoughts at any SOS general or school specific meeting- you can find those scheduled in the school online calendars and the SOS calendar!
As for the directory, parents who provided their email were included in the data upload to MySchoolAnywhere and were requested to confirm their data starting on September 15th. A Principal One Call email communication went out to the K-8 parents on September 16th instructing parents to look for the email or to utilize a link to register their family. If you have not received either communication then neither SOS nor the school has an accurate email account for you and I would advise you to email the team at SOSdirectoryonline@gmail.com for further information.
To date, we have had over 300 families confirm their registration and all responses have been positive and enthusiastic for the switch to an automated process for collecting information. This decision was not spontaneous and has been years in the making for SOS so although there was limited communication at the end of the school year about this process, we are delighted to report that none of the direct email feedback has questioned the decision.
You can go to the SOS website and learn more about SOS volunteer opportunities and the directory at http://www.southboroughsos.com.
I was told that we would soon get an email where we could confirm any existing information before it is all finalized. I wonder if this email would also give the choice to opt out.
To answer your question, you are not wrong in thinking that you should be given the choice as in previous years what information you want made public.
Thank you Wendy. My further concern is about the mobile app that will also be available. While it sounds great to have such easy access to all the phone numbers of all the kids in Southborough right on your phone, I’m concerned about cloud back ups; Google, Microsoft, Verizon to name a few. How secure will this really be? I’m speaking as a mother who’s son experienced identity theft at the age of 19. We really do need to protect our child as well as we can. I, for one, would have chosen to opt out before everything was uploaded to myschoolanywhere.com.
Hi Beth,
My name is Jay Oken and my wife and I are the founders and owners of MySchoolAnywhere.com. We were directed to your post so I thought I’d respond.
First, let me tell you a little about who we are. We are parents of twin 10th grade boys and have been doing directories since they were in Kindergarten. My wife got enlisted to help with the directory and we built software to help us with the process. Three years later we turned it into a business (we were actually the first in the marketplace). Last year we launched an online version called MySchoolAnywhere.com.
We have the same privacy and security concerns that all school parents do and have built our software with that in mind. We have a feature we call eConfirm which sends an email to all families in our database. This email has a unique link for each family (they only have access to their data) so that they can update and confirm their information. There are options to opt out of either (or both) the print directory or the online directory (depending on what your PTA/PTO offers). If you check these “opt-out” boxes then your information will not display. If, however, you just want some of your information not to display (such as just email or just phone) then we have checkboxes for that also.
In addition, we have a global option where the PTA/PTO can set all families to not display/print at the beginning of the year and then require them to “opt-in” to the directory in order to be displayed. For the record, only about 30% of our schools use this option.
There is information on our website regarding our security features but I am happy to discuss them here as well if you’d like. Please know, however, that we only use private servers for backups, not the public cloud.
Finally, we do not (and will not) sell, share, etc. any of the data in our system. We make our money by providing a great service and charging a reasonable annual fee to the PTA/PTO. If the PTA/PTO does any advertising they receive the revenue directly and we do not share in it.
Jay
Thank you Jay for taking the time to post information about your company. It is greatly appreciated. My concern about cloud back is when people download the directory to their individual mobile devices and the backup happens then. That’s a lot of information about the people in our town being downloaded and backed up many, many times.
We agree and that is why our data is not downloaded to your phone. It only lives on our servers. While there is a risk (small) that you might not be able to access the data because of lack of internet connectivity, we felt this risk was minimal compared to the security risk of downloading the data to each users phone.
This morning I am happy to report that I have had a long chat with the SOS chairperson and she had answered many of my questions regarding the new online school directory. While I still feel we should proceed with caution, I understand that thorough research has been done. As Wendy has stated above, there will be an email forth coming to explain how our new online directory will work.
check this out, I’m just wondering why the 8th grade perform not so great compared with other grades?
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2014/09/29/fewer-public-schools-earn-top-mass-rating/d4xEpnGhGPlAGxhNVA9NZN/story.html?p1=Must_Reads_hp
Interesting. I dug through the MassDOE site and found that Neary and Woodward received Level 1 ratings, but Trottier only ranked Level 2.
As shown in the article you link to, the level refers to how well the school did improving the performance of lower testing students. And it appears to be an issue that tripped up many schools.
The Boston Globe reported that 86 schools dropped from 8th grade Level 1 to Level 2 in past 2 years.
I don’t know what Southborough’s level was 2 years ago – so I don’t know if it dropped or not.
They’ve been doing some surveying for several days in a row by the train station, at the intersection of 85 and Southville Rd.
Anyone know if there are plans for upcoming work there?
I asked a surveyor yesterday when he was a little ways up Rt. 85 closer to the Woodland Rd fork. He was working in the direction of Southville Road and North Street, and said someone was refinancing. The lot configuration is a little odd there, check map 4: http://www.southboroughtown.com/assessors/FY14%2024×36%20Parcel%20Maps/Parcel%20Map_4.pdf