Out with the old and in with the new is what student services and administrators are thinking as they move into the 21st century for scheduling student’s classes.

Biddeford High School’s has never changed in terms of how students sign up for classes for the upcoming year. However, for the 2015-2016 school year, the students will put their own information on to the Infinite Campus servers. The Director of Student Services Elias Fletcher is eager for the new scheduling sign ups.

“Before, what would happen is basically the guidance department would collect all the sheets of paper that everybody had filled out,” said Fletcher. “Then we would have to sit down and take all the information and plug it into Infinite Campus, which was extremely time consuming. And now, the information will be automatically plugged in because the students are inserting the information directly onto the program.”

Fletcher is not the only one that is excited for the new way to sign up. Guidance Counselor Dolores Charest agrees the change is much overdue.

“I believe it will help, but it’s beyond just the signing up part that’s going to help the most,” said Charest. “We’re going to get a much nicer master schedule, and I think teachers are going to be happier because they’re going to have a better balance to their classes in terms of the number of students in the class.”

If students need copies of the sign up forms, there will be some printed out in the guidance department, but it’s going to be online on the school department website. If students do not have access to technology the administrators will accommodate those individuals.

“The library at the school will be open before and after school, during lunches, etc.,” said Fletcher. “Worst case scenario, you make an appointment with your guidance counselor and you can use their laptop.”

The only thing the Student Services Department is wary of is the incoming freshmen switching from JumpRope to Infinite Campus. JumpRope is the program the middle school uses to check grades and make their schedules. Fletcher explains that the high school administrators will help with the process.

“To help with that we’ve got days planned for the whole guidance team to go there [BMS] and meet with individual classes and help them with that process,” Fletcher said.

Charest believes the process will be streamlined, making the process more efficient and environmentally friendly by using less paper.

“Of course this year will be a learning curve, like anything the first time you do it,” said Charest. “This will be the ground force and then next year we’ll build on what we learned this year.”

The guidance counselors will also have more time to make the necessary changes if a problem arises in a student’s schedule. Charest explains that the process of how the schedules are made has changed drastically.

“We can offer classes based on the number of requests,” said Charest. “It will help us determine how many sections do we need of a certain class.”

With the Student Services Department confident in the change, all that’s left is the transition between the experience of guidance counselors.

“It was a tough year for schedules because over the summer the two people in guidance who dealt primarily with the schedule moved on, so it was hard to go forward with that,” said Fletcher. “Things will be better.”