T-R PHOTO BY LANA BRADSTREAM - Families work on registering students for the upcoming Marshalltown Community School District 2024-25 year. The district hosted a registration event at Miller Middle School on Thursday to provide help families with any questions or problems they might have with the process.

Even though the 2024-25 Marshalltown Community School District year begins Sept. 3, the time has come for parents to register their children. Online registration began July 1 through the Infinite Campus parent portal. New families should go to the downtown B.A. Niblock MCSD Orpheum Welcome Center for registration questions and to verify the names of the students, along with birthdates and address.

Director of Instruction Shauna Smith encouraged parents to register as soon as possible, which makes the planning for the school year easier for district departments.

“It helps with organization to get the registration done early, especially with new families, because then we know they are coming,” she said. “Otherwise, we do not know they are here.”

Early registration helps the district with planning numerous aspects of the school year – from transportation routes to class size. Any changes families have in transportation has a ripple effect, Smith said. Even though the change might be minor to the parents, it impacts many other people as previously established routes make necessary alterations.

“We’ve got around 5,000 students,” she said. “We look at class sizes and placement of students when it comes to every single grade level, especially when it comes to elementary and our six different elementary schools. We try to hover around the same amount of students in every class size and make sure it is feasible for teachers and manageable for the building leadership. It’s just really important we have those details outlined.”

Smith said there was nothing new to registration this year. However, she asked parents to pay attention to details, such as contact information and Remind messaging.

“That is a key way we communicate with our parents,” Smith said. “It can translate to the parents’ language, and the students’ language. We can enter a message in English and the parent will receive it. That’s a very important detail to pay attention to when registering because if they indicate the appropriate language, we are just more effective within those messages.”

For example, she said a Remind message was sent to parents notifying them of a multi-language registration event at Miller Middle School on Thursday. Smith said if a Burmese family indicated the Karenni language during previous registrations, the message would have been sent in that language.

“We are getting better at communicating with more languages,” she said. “Our number one priority is being effective with language with all families. Families who are brand new to the school district, they don’t necessarily know how the technology can help us with the language barriers. If we can eliminate it, we can be better partners with our families.”

One and a half hours after the Miller registration event began, “a lot” of families were helped, Smith said. It was difficult to determine the number of families at that point, and she added historically there were waves of people coming to register.

“We talk the families through the process,” Smith said. “Sometimes we are more computer-literate. Other times, we just explain one or two things and they continue.”

David Stanfield, MCSD instructional design specialist, was on hand at Miller to assist families with the process.

“I’ve helped them in different ways, such as quick password resets, household issues and getting data organized,” he said. “It’s been a good steady busy.”

Smith is not expecting a big change in the number of registered students from previous years. She said they had an influx of kindergarten students last year.

“I would assume we will hover around the same number,” Smith said. “It’s hard to answer because if you look at our new families, it appears we have more, but we also have a transient population. We just try to guess or estimate, but it’s difficult to know until literally when school starts.”

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Contact Lana Bradstream at 641-753-6611 ext. 210 or lbradstream@timesrepublican.com.