A reader wrote to me this morning, expressing frustration with NC DPI, Wake County and CFNC over her child’s transcript. Apparently, parents need to read the fine print on the CFNC site (emphasis added):
Important Announcement:
- As of May 2014, electronic transcripts are now being processed from NC DPI’s PowerSchool system, HomeBase for currently enrolled students.Please note there will be a temporary process change for electronic transcripts for students who graduated in summer 2012 or before. NC DPI is in the process of migrating historical data from NC WISE to PowerSchool. If you graduated in summer 2012 or before, you will need to contact your high school directly to request a transcript.
- The NC DPI transcript system will be offline beginning Friday afternoon June 27th through mid-July 2014 due to End-of-Year transition. Transcript requests may be made during this time via CFNC.org, but will NOT be processed by NC DPI until mid-July 2014.
A lot of kids and parents trying to get their transcripts are probably wondering why NC DPI would schedule this ‘offline’ time at a point when volume is likely to be high. Was this merge not taken into consideration when NC decided to go with Pearson’s Powerschool? Shouldn’t this migration have been done before now or even before bringing the system online?
LL1885 
Also, DPI sent out an email today that Year End Transition for Home Base is complete and electronic transcript processing would resume by 5:00 PM on Monday.
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That was fast. I am sure a lot of parents will be glad to know that.
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I am a former data manager for a high school in Wake County. The Year-End-Transition process, where the student information system goes down from June 30 until the second week in July, is a routine process that didn’t start with PowerSchool. The YET outage has occurred every year for the last thirteen years in Wake County, regardless of the student information system used. It’s also worth noting that the number of transcripts for students having graduated two years ago is a very small percentage of the transcript requests we receive (most students who go to college do so within a year of graduating high school). Given all of the problems associated with the PowerSchool migration (which are numerous and inexcusable), I’d imagine this data migration is a low priority.
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I’ll add that this process is the one that allows students to be promoted to the next grade, transcripts finalized, school transfers processed, schedules generated, etc.
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Thank you for your comment. It was very useful and constructive.
The powerschool debacle is worth noting since CFNC pointed at the migration in their ‘alert’ they posted. One of the moms who contacted me told me that she was unable to get even a paper copy during this time period even if she came in person — can you speak to that?
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That’s correct. To speed up the process, and to minimize the risk of data corruption, no users are allowed to access the system during the YET process. There are many changes made to data during this time, so they cut it off to minimize risk. Again, this is not new to Power School.
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Not sure if that answered this => One of the moms who contacted me told me that she was unable to get even a paper copy during this time period even if she came in person — can you speak to that?
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Sorry, yes, that’s correct. Because access to the Student Information System is shut down during the YET process, we would be unable to print the transcript even if you came to the school in person because we don’t have access to log in and print one until after the YET process is complete.
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Thank you, your comments here have been most useful.
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Yet more unprofessionalism from HomeBase/PowerSchool. The whole site has been down for days; can’t even see final grades for my rising senior. And it appears to me that the Governor’s Teacher Network is largely about teaching them HomeBase and then those teachers teaching it to the others. Not sure if that’s the best use of time & money, especially a year after implementation.
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