Wake County reports major Infinite Campus go‑live, staff outline outstanding tickets and parent‑portal progress

Wake County Public Schools staff told the Board of Education on Oct. 7 that the district met the Infinite Campus go‑live milestone this summer but still has follow‑up work including help‑desk tickets, duplicate student records and report development.

The presentation to the Wake County Board of Education summarized the district’s October post‑go‑live status after statewide rollout steps led by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. “If you look at the first diamond … from September all the way to the July 1, that is an extremely short runway. That's like landing a jumbo jet on an aircraft carrier,” a district staff member said, describing the timeline for the conversion.

District staff said the state awarded Infinite Campus as a modernization platform for North Carolina, and Wake went live in its phase‑two conversion this year. The presenters said the district converted roughly 448,000 student records from the previous system and provided hundreds of hours of training and support to schools and central staff.

Why it matters: The new student information system (SIS) is the foundation for attendance reporting, transcripts, parent communications and other operational functions. The district emphasized that connectivity, data governance and parent access are immediate priorities as staff complete post‑migration tasks and evaluate additional Infinite Campus modules such as analytics and workflow suites.

Most important facts

- Go‑live and data conversion: Staff said Wake met the July 1 go‑live date and began production use for online registration in October. The district moved 12 years of historical data into Infinite Campus in batched conversions to handle volume.

- Parent portal and accounts: District presenters said about 76% of students have at least one parent account attached in the campus parent portal, which translates to roughly 97,000 students with a connected parent account. A weekly email campaign prompts eligible parents to set up portal access.

- Help desk and tickets: Staff reported closing 5,562 help‑desk tickets and processing more than 4,000 user access requests since launch, while acknowledging remaining items that require external work or additional report development.

- Attendance workflow changes: District staff explained a functional change from the previous system: teachers can take attendance only on the day of instruction (they cannot enter future or back‑dated attendance entries). The district runs nightly jobs to convert unknown attendance to unexcused by 3:45 a.m. so alerts can be sent to parents through SchoolMessenger; data managers and registrars retain the ability to correct and code attendance as excused after the job runs.

Questions and persistent issues

Board members asked about parent account coverage, outstanding parent access problems and how specific attendance errors get corrected. The presenters acknowledged a small number of parent accounts that still need intervention (for example, accounts without an email address cannot self‑reset a password). Staff said they are working with schools to help parents add emails and reset access.

Staff also said some issues still require NCDPI assistance — for example, cases involving duplicate student records that must be resolved with the state — and other delays stem from internal analysis or required report development.

Transcripts, grades and other downstream concerns

Board members asked about transcript and grade‑point average calculation problems tied to course codes and grading tasks. Staff said some issues were human errors during manual data entry for certain course types and that they had held meetings with counselors and representatives to correct grading scales and course codes.

Training and next steps

Staff emphasized continuing training, virtual office hours held twice weekly, a campus passport training resource provided under the DPI‑negotiated contract, and weekly newsletters to data managers. They said the district will evaluate additional Infinite Campus modules — including analytics (early‑warning/graduation risk) and the campus workflow/messenger suites for more timely attendance notifications — and will prioritize modules with clear parent‑facing benefit.

Closing note

Presenters said the statewide modernization effort and district staff effort were major undertakings. “Wake County did something no other district in the state did. We turned the lights on June 23,” a district staff member said, noting that Wake accepted converted data and had buildings with students within six days. Staff told the board they will continue to monitor tickets, refine reports and expand training and outreach efforts.

Speakers quoted in this article are included in the article's speaker list, and all direct quotations come from the meeting transcript.