Farmington Schools Seniors Worry Over Transcript Glitch

Like most high school seniors, student Andrew Fedurek is applying to a number of colleges and universities around the country.

And a key part of part of those applications are his academic transcripts - a list of the grades for the classes he's taken, plus his senior year class schedule. Usually, those documents are sent together from the district to the college.

But a bump in the road in ' transition to new student records software has him and other students a little worried about the process.

Fedurek learned that grades and other academic information for everyone's freshman, sophomore and junior years were still stored on the old system, Skyward. But senior class schedules were only on Zangle. Because they were in separate systems, the documents could not be sent together through Docufide, which provides online access to school transcripts.

"They were going to upload grades, and then send the 12th grade schedule separately," Fedurek said.

Fedurek is online editor for the school's Northern Star newspaper. He and editor Sam Gringlas started looking for information, and so far, two stories have been published. In "No Transcript Trauma," published Sept. 19, Principal Joe Greene and the district's Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Catherine Cost assured students the transcript situation would be resolved before college admission deadlines.

NorthernStarOnline.com reported the problem arose when a spot-check by Farmington school officials uncovered errors in data that Oakland Intermediate School District transferred from Skyward to Zangle.

Student journalists stayed on the story, looking for a more firm timeline as to when records would be completely transferred. Seniors were especially concerned, Fedurek said, and the newspaper staff "just wanted to calm people down."

"We were nagging the district," Fedurek said. "They wouldn't tell us what progress had been made. On Friday (Sept. 23), Sam went to the Central Office and contacted Catherine Cost directly."

They got their answer. On Sept. 25, Gringlas posted a "Transcript update" that informed students that complete transcripts should be available through Zangle starting Sept. 30. That's well ahead of the Nov. 1 deadline for early admission decisions, but Fedurek believes it's still cutting things close.

And he doesn't have complete confidence that all will go as planned.

"I don't think I'll be satisfied until I see my 12th grade transcript on Docufide," Fedurek said.