The pre-tech Registrar Office

March 15, 2024

Before databases and scheduling programs, getting 700-800 students and 100 faculty organized into class sections was a huge, labor-intensive task.

Creating a non-conflicting schedule for all the students, teachers and rooms was one herculean task. It was and still is not fully possible. Not all students are going to be able to take all the courses they want. The registrar staff worked for weeks in the summer putting it together based on the course requests collected before school ended, and mixing that with requests from the new students.

The next huge task was then informing all the students (and their parents) and the teachers with accurate class schedules. Our school had about 700 students, so that meant TYPING 700 student schedules. They were about 400 sections scattered across the time periods. That meant TYPING 400 class lists, and then photocopying each one and sorting them by teacher. It meant stapling them and then physically delivering all of this to each teacher’s mail slot. The student schedules would be mailed. The room for error was enormous even with the most diligent and dedicated staff. Probably 100-200 man-hours. 

Even assuming that everyone attended classes based on these papers, the first two weeks allowed for drop and add. Students requested different electives which generally meant switching English or math or language sections. This meant careful notifying the dropped and added teacher, hoping that they would make the appropriate changes to their class list and grade book. The school didn’t even try to keep track of the afternoon athletic classes and teams. The athletic office was tasked with keeping that straight and making it available right before the marking periods. 50-100 man-hours plus 200 for the athletic office.

At our school, we ran on trimesters, so with midterms we had 6 grading periods. Each time, each teacher was required to write a grade and a short comment onto a triplicate form for each student. The form was blank, so the teacher had to legibly and accurately write the student name and the course and section. There was little possibility for checking that all the students received a comment from every teacher. There was also a dorm comment for boarding students and a sport comment. That averaged 7 comments per student.

Teachers were required to submit these by 9am on a given day, usually a Friday. The average was about 80-90 comments per teacher. Whether or not the teacher had the right students, or remembered all of them was difficult to check. Some of the teachers missed the deadline – often the same ones every time.

So about seven comments times 700 students is about 5000 separate forms.

All the admin staff from all the offices gathered and began to place these forms in narrow filing boxes with a label card for each student. Even with 7-8 staff, filing 5 a minute, this was a 6 to 7 hour ordeal. And some forms stuck together or fit inside another, occasionally they were put in the next student, etc. Filing 5000 forms completely correctly is nearly impossible. It was about 50 man-hours of labor, under extreme time pressure.

That afternoon the faculty was invited to have snacks and assemble to get their comments. In some order, each faculty was invited to pull the sorted comments for each of their 7-8 advisees. The faculty person would then look through the comments, sort them by course number, and make sure they were all there and complete. Another 100 man-hours.

The advisors met with their advisees usually on Monday, discussed the comments and grades, and then wrote a global comment for the parents about the student’s progress. Then the advisor separated the 7 comments into the three parts – white, pink and yellow, organized them by class number, stapled them with the advisor comment and delivered these to the main office. The advisor kept the pink copies. Another 2 hours of work times 100 faculty = 200 man-hours.

Nearly all the comments were read for legibility and content by deans and inevitably a few went back to the teacher or the advisor. 

Back at the main office, the staff filed 700 yellow copies into student files. Then the white copies were folded, and placed in an envelope addressed to the parent. In the case of divorced families, the comments had to be photocopied and then a second envelope prepared. Another 100 man-hours.

So pre-tech, just the report writing for EACH of the 6 periods required 1000 or more man-hours by the staff and the deans, not to mention the labor of the teachers and advisors. 

Changing this would be revolutionary and fiercely resisted!