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District employee tells board Helios substitute/absence system is creating extra work and coverage problems
Summary
A district employee said the Helios absence and substitute assignment system approved by the board earlier this year fails to provide contracted hours, prevents substitutes from seeing hours, allows absences to be entered for any site (causing workflow errors), and lacks split-absence functionality, increasing workload and causing coverage gaps.
A district employee told the board that Helios, the new system adopted in February 2024 to replace Frontline, is creating substantial operational problems for site staff and substitutes.
The commenter said Helios lacks contracted hours for positions, which forces staff to enter additional information and prevents substitutes from easily seeing available hours for a given job. "Frontline used to only allow you to enter absences for your employees or yourself at your school site. Helios, you can enter for any site for any employee. This is causing a lot of issues," the commenter said. She added that Helios does not allow splitting absences, meaning multi-day absences require multiple entries and extra work.
The speaker said she starts work from home early to set coverage because it is otherwise hard to secure substitutes, and that Helios routes some items into incorrect department queues. Board members thanked the speaker; no corrective action was announced during the meeting and the issues remained unresolved in the record.
