Graduating To An Automated Attendance System

Located in Hugoton, a rural town in Southwest Kansas, Hugoton Learning Academy is a charter school focused on non-traditional education for grades 7 through 12. The school helps a wide range of students, including those who do not function well in traditional schools and those who would like to work while pursuing their high school diploma.

As a charter school, Hugoton Learning Academy places a high level of importance on accurately tracking the hours its diploma-seeking students are in school. The school's funding from the state of Kansas depends upon attendance, so Hugoton Learning Academy must provide the total hours and minutes each student attends class. Two specific days each year are designated as state "count days," when attendance information is submitted to the state for funding purposes.

In the past, students signed into school each day on a paper attendance log at the front desk, making time and attendance tracking difficult and time-consuming.

After the hand-written time log was completed, Burrows spent at least 15 to 20 minutes each day keying the data into a spreadsheet and calculating attendance time.