By Sean Bailey / Staff Writer

The Corbin Independent School District is hiring some help for the transition to the state-mandated “Infinite Campus” program — a transition that has proved to be logistically “scary” in districts throughout the state.

The “Infinite Campus” program is a web-based student management system that contains information about every student — such as attendance, class assignments, grades and other statistics. The web-based nature of the program allows the Kentucky Department of Education to monitor each school’s performance.

The program comes with its transitional problems, according to reports from other districts, several board of education members pointed out.

“It scares everybody,” Superintendent Ed McNeel said.

During its regular Thursday meeting, the board voted to create a data entry position to help with the transition. Director of Support Services Mark Daniels said the new hire will help with the massive amount of data conversion and entry the district needs to accomplish over the upcoming months.

Board Member Dr. Carmel Wallace asked Daniels if there were any districts in the state able to transition to the system with ease.

The simple answer, Daniels explained, was “not really.”

Madison County is one of the first counties who will “go live” with their Infinite Campus system by putting it on the Internet for state and parental use. Daniels said the Corbin school district is in the “last wave” of schools mandated by the state to adopt the system.

“We’ll take advice from other school districts. Madison County has taken the most active steps, and they took on another person (to work on the program),” Daniels said.

Daniels said the transition is difficult because the Infinite Campus program collects data in a fundamentally different way than past student management systems.

“It’s a different mindset,” Daniels said. “It looks at households not individual students. If there is a household with five students, it lists them in the same household and not as five individual students.”

Daniels said the new position should be filled by someone experienced with data entry, and someone able to understand the Infinite Campus system well enough to adapt to the district’s needs.

On Thursday, the board also recognized the Corbin High School Center program, which won the 21st Century Community Learning Award of Excellence.

The program gives students in middle school and high school the opportunity to use CHS’s media center after school while they wait for their parents to pick them up.

Special Projects Curriculum Supervisor Karen West said about 75 students are part of the program. According to data she collected from last year’s program, 80 percent of students involved improved homework completion. Of the students who attended frequently, 95 percent saw an overall improvement academically.

Darlene McBurney, who helps students in the program, pointed out that students have also created several clubs through the program — among them a sign language club and a speech team.

Thursday’s board of education meeting took place in Corbin Primary’s media center, which has been called the “heart” of the new school. The media center is the physical center of the school, where all of the “learning pods” connect.

Corbin Primary Curriculum Specialist Ann Longworth said during her report to the board that the new school has exceeded the administration’s hopes.

“I think it’s probably exceeded our expectations. I know that this was the vision we had — that this would be the focus of our school for extended learning opportunities,” Longworth said.

In other Corbin Board of Education news:

• Superintendent McNeel announced that CHS science and math teachers met with the district’s architectural firm Sherman-Carter-Barnhart about additions for new science and math departments at the high school.

McNeel said there are also plans for a new band room and a new administrative office near the students’ entrance. McNeel said the addition of the office would turn the students’ entrance into the new main entrance. McNeel said there is a high level of traffic around that area without supervision, and a new office in that part of the building would alleviate security concerns.

McNeel said he expects plans for the additions to be presented at the next board of education meeting.

• The board also looked at the first draft of the 2009-10 calendar. Board member Kim Croley asked that the calendar committee consider making Aug. 13 and 14 — the dates of next year’s Nibroc — full days off instead of a half-days off because of the heavy amount of traffic throughout the city.

McNeel said organizers are considering scheduling Nibroc during the first week of August in 2011, which would put it before the start of the 2011-2012 school year.

Sean Bailey can be reached at sbailey@thetimestribune.com