HCCA has been contacted by several districts requesting a solution to scheduling parent-teacher conferences electronically. We did some research and checked with other ITCs and districts and found a product called pickAtime.  Their web address is: http://www.pickatime.com/?page=education  if you would like to go online and check out the benefits, create a demo account, etc.

We contacted the company and worked out a reduced price for all our districts regardless of size of the building/district.  The price and billing information is as follows:

Cost:

It is a cost per conference for up to a maximum of 2 conferences a year. If a school has more than two conferences in a calendar year, then we do not charge beyond the two conferences.

Upper is for the grades where each student has more than four teachers.

Lower is for the grades where each student generally has just one teacher, but the system allows up to four.

Invoicing:

The system will automatically send an email invoice after your parent-teacher conferences are finished.

To determine your charges, the system looks at the data you imported and for each teacher it decides whether that teacher has students with more than 4 classes.  If they have more, then the Upper rate is used. If they have less, then the Lower rate is used. There is no charge for teachers who have no classes.

This means that you can import your whole teacher database and not worry that you will be charged for substitute teachers.

Invoices will come directly from pickAtime.

Additional Information: 

HCCA has created custom extracts using DUCK  to upload the data to the system for scheduling parent-teacher conferences.

When you sign up for the service, there is a question that will ask, “How did you hear about PickATime?” in the drop-down, choose HCCA, and that will guarantee that you are charged the reduced rate.

Additional benefits for administrators, counselors, and teachers can be found on the website.  http://www.pickatime.com/?page=education