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Buffalo schools registration department will computerize this summer

WBFO News file photo

The Buffalo school district is making some basic, yet far-reaching changes to its long-troubled Central Registration operation on Ash Street, including the implementation of some of the recommendations of a UCLA professor who studied the district.

Picture an office where people wait in long lines and everything is done on paper -- typed, retyped, and retyped again -- then stored on paper, and sometimes lost on paper. That has been the situation at the district's Central Registration Department and both parents and administrators have complained about it for a long time.

Mark Frazier, the district's Acting Director of Central Registration, realized how bad it was when he was asked to help a parent who couldn't read or write and had to fill in the child's name and birth date seven different times on the paperwork. He also says paperwork was chronically lost.

Frazier explains the convoluted system facing every one of the thousands of parents using the Ash Street facility, starting with the forms they fill out at the placement office.

"They then leave that placement office and go next door to the registration office, where that entire information is retyped into Infinite Campus from beginning to end by a different set of workers," says Frazier. "So, you're going from placement to registration. So all information is entered into one technology system, called the magnet system, then they move next door to go to Infinite Campus."

Next month, the entire process will be done on one computer system and workers will handle multiple tasks. Central Registration is also slated to get a document storage system so paperwork such as birth certificates won't get lost.

The district is also installing a website parents can use before arriving. That was one of the suggestions of UCLA professor Gary Orfield, who studied the district and found major dead spots. Orfield suggested an informative website would help students and parents make decisions.

Mike Desmond is one of Western New York’s most experienced reporters, having spent nearly a half-century covering the region for newspapers, television stations and public radio. He has been with WBFO and its predecessor, WNED-AM, since 1988. As a reporter for WBFO, he has covered literally thousands of stories involving education, science, business, the environment and many other issues. Mike has been a long-time theater reviewer for a variety of publications and was formerly a part-time reporter for The New York Times.
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