Infinite Campus rollout faces challenges at RHS

By Austin Wymore and Conrad Hamel

Infinite Campus has replaced PowerSchool this year in a North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) decision, but schools are having a hard time adapting to the new software.

“I am struggling to utilize Infinite Campus in a way that I did with PowerSchool,” said Assistant Principal Will Okun. “I haven’t been able to figure out how to do the same things in Infinite Campus that I could do in PowerSchool, and what worries me is that it may not be possible.”

DPI signed the contract with Infinite Campus back in 2023, following year-by-year price hikes by PowerSchool.

“Infinite Campus was chosen for a number of reasons,” said DPI Superintendent Mo Green. “They have a more modern and comprehensive solution that will support our students, parents, and educators.” (CBS17)

Infinite Campus itself claims to “push the envelope and help districts break away from their traditional K12 processes,” according to the company website.

However, teachers and students at Riverside have run into a multitude of issues, including students being unable to see individual assignments, teachers being unable to see cumulative grades for students, inconsistent access levels for admins, software overall being hard to navigate and more.

“I want a way to look at kids’ grades and attendance at the exact same time,” said Okun, “and I can’t figure out how to do that yet on Infinite Campus.”

Riverside and DPS seem to be working through these issues one at a time. Some are being resolved but it’s unclear if every matter is fixable.

One of the foremost users of Infinite Campus at Riverside, data manager Kelli Zwickle-Cheek is in charge of handling all student information, including grades, attendance, and more.

“Infinite Campus is not user-friendly at all,” expressed Zwickle-Cheek. “It has a lot of extra steps. I have to jump through a lot of hoops.”

Another new change that Zwickle-Cheek explained is that transportation is now directly linked to the Infinite Campus software.

“People, I’m sure, are very mad at transportation, but transportation is limited because it goes through Infinite Campus,” she said. “This year, [transport issues are] probably still personnel, but there’s a lot to do with Infinite Campus too.”

Since the state rolled over all of the student information this past summer, the districts have been implementing the software in phases, DPS being part of phase two. The trouble seems to have started with the district implementation, specifically with the levels of access.

“[DPS] are not giving everyone the access that they should be so that we can work as a team,” Zwickle-Cheek explained.