Revere High School (RHS) has made a recent switch in programs from Naviance to SchooLinks, making it simpler for students and teachers to prepare for life after graduation.
Naviance and SchooLinks are college and career readiness platforms to help students plan their postgraduate path after highschool.
RHS principal Doug Faris has been working to make sure the switch goes smoothly.
“It helps our counseling team mainly with tracking those pieces of information because that’s a lot. If you multiply all that by 950 kids, that’s a lot of data,” Faris said.
Faris explained that SchooLinks will help the counselors track volunteer hours, graduation seals and help seniors get recommendation letters for college.
Making a big switch like this can be tricky since there is so much information to transfer. Additionally, there is a lot of research that needs to be done.
Chrissi Anderson is a school counselor who has helped make the change. Anderson has been researching the benefits SchooLinks has.
“There’s been a big push around high schools lately to move to SchooLinks, and Revere jumped on board after some research,” Anderson said.
School Counselor Nick DePompei has played a vital role in the switch to SchooLinks.
“For years we’ve listened to other schools and each year we’re like we needed a little more, we needed a little more. Then finally it was kind of like an overwhelming amount of information that we could go with this program versus the other one,” DePompei said.
The switch to SchooLinks also helps students when it comes to tracking things like graduation requirements by making things simpler.
“Instead of being in six different places, now it’s all in one,” Anderson said.
Revere has gotten varying feedback from teachers and students on the change.
“I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from my students during my senior meetings when I’m showing kids around SchooLinks and showing them how to do the various things that we need them to do. They’re all saying that this seems to be a lot easier than Naviance. So I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from students,” Anderson said.
It takes time to adjust to a big change like this. Both staff and students are learning how SchooLinks works.
“We were just learning the program and all that it can do and kind of implementing new pieces each time as we unroll it to you guys,” Depompei said.
As staff and students continue to adjust to the new program, RHS administrators are looking forward to the benefits it will bring.
