The school’s use of the new Enriching Students app to track student attendance during FLEX time, but this app offers more problems than it does solutions.

With Enriching Students, students are supposed to schedule where they’re going to for FLEX for the week. The goal of using this app is to make sure that nobody is skipping FLEX, and that everyone is present and accounted for, and in an emergency, administration knows where every student is. The plan seems great on paper, but how helpful really is it?

The students don’t like it. It’s extra work, it’s stressful, and there are flaws within the app that make it difficult to use.

One big problem with using this app is that students can’t always plan what they’re going to need help with a week in advance. For example, if someone is struggling with a new math topic, it can be hard to get help from a teacher when a student isn’t already signed up for math FLEX. 

Classes and study halls can fill up really fast, and other times glitches lock students out from signing up leaving some students with nowhere to go. In the past, students would be turned away from a FLEX session if the teachers room was full. Those students could still go to other teachers or study halls. Now however, a student can be punished for not signing up for FLEX, even if all of their teachers’ classes are full. 

With anything new, there are going to be errors, but this app is frustrating to use.  How are students supposed to sign up for FLEX if the app is prohibiting them from doing so?

Enriching Students has been helpful for knowing where students are during FLEX. However, a lot of students just don’t sign up for FLEX at all. How can the app account for everybody in the school if some people don’t put themselves into the system? The goal here may be safety, but if there was an emergency, these students could end up left behind. 

The app has also been helpful for students who need extra help because teachers invite students to their FLEX who need that. 

However, the flaws in this system outweigh the positives. Using Enriching Students has done nothing but stress out students and overcomplicate what should be a simple system.

Instead of using Enriching Students, NFHS could adopt a different app that doesn’t have as many errors, or the school could also go back to the old method of FLEX and take student attendance. 

Either way, Enriching Students is not the answer.