At a Davis School District Board of Education workshop, Technology Director Brett Singleton and members of the district information‑technology team presented usage data and a roadmap for myDSD, the district’s parent and student portal, and told the board they plan to implement real‑time syncing with Canvas and expand language and security features.

The presentation matters because myDSD is heavily used by families and students and the district said delays in syncing grades between Canvas and myDSD have caused confusion. "Our student information system ... is customized to the programs we use and we feel like it's really awesome and effective for us and we think that myDSD is really the best parent student portal out there the money could buy," Technology Director Brett Singleton said.

Singleton said the district logged nearly 80,000 unique visitors on the last day of school and roughly 450,000 page views on that date, and that mobile devices are the primary access method—hence the district’s “mobile‑first” approach when it rewrote myDSD about a decade ago. Tyler Bradovich, the district’s Lehi analyst for the student information system, told the board the district recorded more than 20 million assignments scored in Canvas last year, which creates a large volume of data to move between systems and has been a cause of the lag.

To address that, Bradovich said the district is developing "real time syncing from Canvas. As soon as a student signs into myDSD, their data will be updated instantly." Singleton described that work as the team’s top priority for the upcoming school year. He said earlier improvements—moving teachers to automatic nightly Canvas syncs—reduced delays, but some parents still saw a 12‑ to 24‑hour lag.

The presentation reviewed features families use daily: online course requests and built‑in validation to enforce prerequisites, document signing for permission slips and disclosures, attendance reporting that lets guardians excuse absences, access to lunch balances and report cards, a graduation summary indicating on‑track status, and pages that expose special‑education progress documents. Singleton said adding a federal‑property confirmation feature into myDSD increased the district’s federal impact aid return rate from about 65% when handled on paper to roughly 85% through the portal.

On security and access, the district said it will add multifactor authentication for guardian accounts to reduce unauthorized access. "Multifactor authentication ... is widely adopted best practices that significantly reduce the risk of unauthorized access," Singleton said. He also said the team is preparing tools to let new families complete registration digitally through myDSD and that the platform already supports English and Spanish; translations into Portuguese, Marshallese and Chuukese are in progress.

Board members praised the system and suggested usability improvements. Board Member Joni Stevens called myDSD "an incredible resource" and asked whether the district would restore a native app; Singleton said the district removed the separate app to maintain a single web code base and now offers an "add to home screen" shortcut to mimic app behavior. Vice President Emily Price said she still uses the app on her phone and noted limited functionality remains for some users.

Parents on the board asked practical questions about features: whether official transcript requests could be routed through myDSD, how long post‑graduation access lasts (students: one year; guardians: at least seven years), and whether lunch payments could be charged automatically each time a child uses lunch services. Bradovich said the district stores ACH accounts for payments but does not store credit‑card numbers for PCI reasons; he agreed to investigate recurring‑charge options.

Board Member Mercer urged the district to offer demonstrations or help tables at back‑to‑school nights and district events to assist parents who have not adopted myDSD. "We could connect with our PTAs to get people in the schools with families to just get those late adapters," Mercer said. The presenters said they will provide usage‑rate details on request and welcomed the suggestion to reach families directly.

No formal board action was requested or taken; the presentation was informational. District staff said next steps are to continue work on the real‑time Canvas sync, implement guardian multifactor authentication, finish targeted language translations, and pursue digital student registration tools. The presenters invited further feedback and agreed to bring usage breakdowns and implementation timelines to the board on request.