Prince George's County (Md.) district will keep troubled computer system

From The Washington Post: An investigation by the Prince George's County (Md.) school district has found that the computer system that snarled the first days of the new school year had significant shortcomings that required repeated repairs. But it also determined that replacing the system would be more costly and time-consuming than fixing it.

SEPTEMBER 2009....from The Washington Post: The Prince George's County (Md.) school system has issued class schedules to all but a handful of its 41,000 high school students, officials say. The 8,000 students who began the year with incorrect or partial class schedules are now in their correct classes. The problems have been blamed on problems with a new computer system.

AUGUST 2009....from The Washington Post: The cost of the Prince George's County (Md.) school system's failure to schedule classes for thousands of high school students during the first week of school can be measured in hours and days wasted, lessons unlearned and scarce cash blown on the overtime needed to fix a troubled computer system. But the fiasco also has cost Superintendent William R. Hite Jr. and the Board of Education something more precious and more difficult to measure: the public's trust. By Friday, five days into a crisis that stranded more than 8,000 of the system's 41,000 high school students without classes on the first day of school, nearly 1,300 students still lacked schedules.

EARLIER....from The Washington Post: Thousands of high school students in Prince George's County, Md., missed a third day of classes Wednesday, and school officials say it may take more than a week to sort out the chaos caused by a computerized class-scheduling system. Students were placed in gyms, auditoriums, cafeterias, libraries and classes they didn't want or need at high schools across the county. When school opened Monday, about 8,000 high school students had no class schedules and were sent to wait in holding spaces while administrators tried to sort things out. By Tuesday evening, that number was down to 4,000. On Wednesday, on the orders of central office administrators, some schools put students into classes almost at random.

EARLIER...from The Washington Post: About 4,000 high school students in Prince George's County, Md., remained out of class for a second day Tuesday as ongoing problems with the school district's computer system left them waiting for class schedules that never arrived.