It’s the first day of classes and you wait patiently as your teacher passes out schedules. You glance down, confused when you see that you only have seven classes: you’re missing a B2. You heed your teacher’s instructions and head to the auditorium to wait for a new schedule, but balk at the door as you behold all the students filling the rows. It appears nearly every student has some problem with their schedule, and even more have heard their teachers cursing the mysterious eSchool under their breath. Nobody seems to know what this system does, but after searching all around the school, answers have been found.

This year the Little Rock School District (LRSD) switched their grading and scheduling system from Edline to eSchool. So far, it appears this switch has done more harm than good, and few people know how eSchool works or what eSchool is.

“ESchool is the new scheduling, grading, and finance system that has been incorporated in the Little Rock School District,” guidance counselor Kim Williams said. “It’s a one stop shop: it’s going to replace edline for parents, and it’s going to replace the AS/400 or the iSeries that we normally look at to get semester grades, to look at transcripts, to get all of our demographic student information — it has all been totally replaced by eSchool.”

Having so many resources in one system is one of the reasons the district decided to switch to eSchool. According to Williams, the LRSD was the last school district in Arkansas to make the switch.

“The rest of the state was using [eSchool], and so Edline is no more. We now use HAC, which is Home Access Center, that is the parent-student version of eSchool where they are able to get a login and look at your grades for free just like they would in Edline,” Williams said.

Parents should have received their HAC information in the mail the week of Aug 28. For more information on how to use HAC, visit the user’s manual here.