CHARLESTON, W.Va. — State Board of Education President Paul Hardesty says he’s been “worn out” by the number of phone calls he’s received complaining about problems with the Department of Education’s WVEIS 2.0.
“It’s gotten so bad that I now refer to it as WVEIS 2-point-no,” Hardesty said at this week’s board of education meeting.
WVEIS (West Virginia Education Information System) is the state’s education information system that records and distributes information from teachers, counselors and other county school staff when it comes to things like student attendance, grades, transcripts and disciplinary records required to be submitted to the state. The department completed a major upgrade to the system over the summer called WVEIS 2.0 but it’s produced a number of difficulties in the county school systems.
State Deputy Superintendent Dr. Sara Lewis-Stankus said the department has responded by creating a help desk to field questions, holding two TEAMS meetings a week with stakeholders and targeting specific positions that are having the most issues with the new system.
“We’re collecting specific technical issues the practitioners are having,” Lewis-Stankus told the state BOE Wednesday. “We’ve also targeted counselors and they are going to meet with our WVEIS experts here to target the specific challenges they are having.”
Hardesty said he’s heard from a lot of school workers.
“I’m getting worn out by people in the field. I understand that nobody likes change but if we weren’t ready to roll it out–did we roll it out at the wrong time? I don’t know,” Hardesty said.
Lewis-Stankus said another step the department has taken is that it’s brought back two retired employees familiar with WVEIS to help with the issues.
“We are working very diligently to address all of the challenges that are presented as we roll out this system for our entire state,” she said.
Lewis-Stankus said she understands the frustration that’s been caused by delays in accessing the updated system or unable to link to it at all.
“When you are in the classroom you want to enter grades. When you’re at the secretary’s desk you want to find that schedule. When you are in the principal’s seat you want to look at discipline,” Lewis-Stankus said. “We know that the field really demands this kind of information.”
Programmers were dispatched back to the state Department of Education this week to work on the programming issues, Lewis-Stankus said.
Hardesty suggested a task force be formed to provide further assistance.
“Our people are hurting over this and let’s provide them all the support we possibly can,” he said.