This month it was easy to choose Phil Boutros as my spotlight because the timing couldn’t be more perfect!
As a VP of software development for Oracle and a busy dad of three Stevenson High School students — Chris, a senior, going to Indiana in the fall; Madeline, a junior; and Andy, a sophomore — it would seem he has his hands full.
Although they might be full, Phil still had time to come up with an incredibly useful website for Stevenson students to use to figure out their predicted GPA.
Phil says, “When Chris was a freshman we (my wife Damaris and I) dove into the SHS handbook to try to understand the grading system. This led me, after a year or so, to build an Excel spreadsheet to do the grade calculations and I'd sit with each kid near the end of the semester and figure out where they were and where they should focus their time.”
Phil knew of at least one other dad that did the same type of spreadsheet and expects there are many more. He adds, “I wanted the kids to use the spreadsheet directly but they never really did, apparently most of the time students took the handbook and back of a napkin approach to figure it out.”
I know from personal experience that my kids were desperately recalling their slackened long division skills to try and figure out not only their GPAs, but also worked to figure out what they had to get on each final to keep their current grades. I would find scraps of paper strewn around as they worked to figure it out. Now my son, a sophomore at Stevenson, has been happily using http://shsgpp.appspot.com.
About six months ago, while Phil was toying around with some web development tools for his job, he realized how simple it would be to throw together this type of web site. And so he did. After approximately 20-30 hours of work, the final spreadsheet was created for the website.
He says, “The calculation itself is trivial, getting it to look reasonably good and work on all the different browsers and devices (computers, tablets and phones) took most of the time. The site lacks a decorative background and layout purposely so that it works well on phones.”
With that being said, there is no need for Phil to build a dedicated iPhone or Android app. Using his good friends, the Marx family, as well as his own kids as beta testers, he finally had a finished product. The site is dedicated and specific to the Stevenson grading system so it won’t work for any other high schools. Neither Phil nor the Boutros family makes any financial gains from this site. It’s truly a labor of love.
Finished product in hand, Phil had to learn how Stevenson would react to his website. He says, “I went in with a with a ‘better to ask forgiveness than permission’ approach and released the site without consulting them.”
He ended up contacting Jim Conrey, public information coordinator at Stevenson, who helped him greatly in getting the information out on the SHS Twitter and Facebook pages as well as the Daily Digest. Here are a couple interesting tips Phil shared about http://shsgpp.appspot.com:
• The site purposely doesn't ask for any identifying or personal information and never stores the grades anywhere but the device the student is using. This avoids the very sticky legal issues surrounding collecting and storing information from minors.
• Along with getting all the mathematical equations correct, the site also compensates for college prep, accelerated and honors/AP grading. It also includes the exceptional cases and warnings that most kids aren’t aware of that most often would involve slacking second semester seniors.
As finals approach around the corner, hopefully kids will now know where to focus more of their efforts due to the help of this great new website.
Please email me if you know someone who should be in the spotlight. I can be reached at laurenbgpatch@aol.com.
