March 18, 2024

Homework Central Program created to keep Aurora Heights parents updated

For the last several years, Aurora Heights Elementary School has always pushed its students and staff to embrace using more technology in the educational process. Now, the push is being extended to parents.

At the beginning of this school year, the school launched its “Homework Central” portal on its website. Homework Central gives parents two ways — the other being the traditional student planner — of seeing what particular assignments are due and on which day.Carol Farver, Aurora Heights principal, said there were a few issues they’ve encountered over the years with the planner. Parents either couldn’t read their child’s writing in the planner or students sometimes simply forget to write in their homework assignments.

“We were sending emails to some parents to confirm what the work was anyway … So, I just thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have something on the web on our district’s webpage and on our school’s webpage that would briefly tell everyone what the assignment was for each day and each class?’” Farver said.

With that idea in mind, Farver said she reached out to Chris Beighler, the district’s technology supervisor, who informed her Berg Middle School had a similar system already in place. Since the system was already available, he said it wouldn’t be an issue to do it for another school.

“The middle school does do it. Since we are 4-6 (grades) it would be a nice transition (for the parents),” Farver said.

Homework Central was designed to be incredibly user-friendly. First, visit Aurora Height's webpage, http://www.newton.k12.ia.us/ah_home.aspx. Once the page is up, look for the "Homework Central" tab at the top of the scrollbar on left side of the page.

After that, it’s simply a matter of picking a grade and selecting a Monday. For current assignments, parents should click on the Monday that begins that week, and to check past assignments select an older Monday.

Farver said teachers try to update the page day-to-day. Another added bonus is this new system helps children who are out sick keep up with their assignments, she said.

This new page is a bit of a change for most Aurora Heights parents, but it seems to be catching on. Sandy Baumgart, a fourth-grade teacher at the school, said the new method was particularly praised by one parent at a recent round of parent-teacher conferences.

“The parent liked it because then, his child couldn’t lie to him about his homework. There was a place he could go to double-check the facts,” Baumgart said.

Contact Ty Rushing at
641-792-3121 Ext. 6532 or
trushing@newtondailynews.com