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Week 33: More Than Just a System Update
Happy Friday!
As we approach the final weeks of the school year, I want to take a moment to thank each of you for your steady focus and hard work. This time of year always brings excitement, reflection, and anticipation. Whether it is preparing students for end-of-year assessments, planning celebrations of growth, or supporting the many daily needs of our students, your efforts continue to make a lasting impact. I am grateful for your professionalism, patience, and commitment to helping us finish strong. In this week’s Wrap-up, I will also share important updates about cybersecurity measures and training that will be implemented for the next school year to help protect our students, staff, and systems.
You May Have Missed This
Last week, I shared information about a new communication platform called Rooms that will soon be launched in our district. However, based on the number of people who opened last week’s Wrap-up, I can tell that many may have missed this update. Frankly, if I had seen the title about new laws impacting education, I probably would have skipped it, too. That being said, this information is important enough to share again.
Over the next several weeks, we will begin a soft launch of Rooms, a communication platform integrated into our existing Thrillshare system from Apptegy. This tool will become the unified platform for students, parents, and staff beginning this fall. While we are not asking anyone to stop using Remind, Seesaw, ClassDojo, or other classroom apps just yet, we do ask that you participate in training sessions when they are offered so we can transition together smoothly.
Rooms includes all of the familiar features you use daily: messaging, file sharing, updates, announcements, and parent-teacher communication, all within a secure, school-managed system. It also syncs with Google Classroom and supports many other tools already in use in your classrooms. Our goal is to reduce confusion and streamline communication, especially for families who currently juggle several apps because they have students in multiple schools.
This conversion is driven by two important needs: first, to allow the district to oversee and support all communication, ensuring consistency and professionalism; and second, because families have directly requested a single app for all school-related messages.
We will continue the gradual rollout through the spring and summer, giving everyone time to become familiar and comfortable before full adoption this fall. I appreciate your flexibility and professionalism as we make this positive change. If you would like to learn more about Rooms, you can visit: https://www.apptegy.com/rooms/
Safety is Inconvenient, Getting Hacked Is Devastating
When talking about safety, one of the things I have said several times over the years is: "Safety is inconvenient." Whether it is waiting for buses to unload one at a time, requiring double-checks on field trip lists, or wearing those itchy orange vests at car duty, safety slows us down, gets in our way, and complicates what could otherwise be simple. But we do it because not doing it costs too much.
That same truth now applies to a new and growing domain of cybersecurity.
Two recent laws — HB1369 (Act 504) and HB1780 (Act 846) — require Arkansas public schools to tighten the digital borders of our operations. These are not issues for the IT department alone. They are now part of how we protect students, staff, and systems. And like any real safety effort, they will feel inconvenient. But the alternative is much worse.
~What These Laws Mean for Schools~
HB1369 (Act 504) requires us, as a school district, to:
* Adopt and enforce a Technology Resources Policy that defines appropriate use of sch
Published on 4 months, 1 week ago