American High administration adopts transcript website Parchment
Sarah Jensen
Staff Writer
Transcript delivery website Parchment became ready for American High students to use on February 8, 2016. The service is now running smoothly for current students and alumni to use.
Parchment is a credential-sharing website, which extends to diplomas, certificates, and other key documents. For a $5 fee, students at American High may send their transcripts to colleges and scholarship-related organizations through this site. In October, American High School alumni became able to send their transcripts using Parchment as a test run.
“I wanted to get a good sense of how everything worked with former students before I throw my current students in there,” registrar Susan Dunsford said. “Everything’s running smooth, very clean.”
Among the advantages of using Parchment, Dunsford says, are the speed, accuracy, reduced paper and wait, and overall convenience compared to traditional paper documents.
“When you order a paper transcript from us, you’re gonna get it in an envelope,” Dunsford explained. “You still have to address it, you have to put postage on it, and you have to send it to the school. Colleges are familiar with or use Parchment, so their electronic delivery is just immediate, and it’s just that much faster and that much safer for the student getting their transcript to their college.”
Student Mannat Kaur (12), who used Parchment to send a transcript to a college, called Parchment “confusing at first” but ultimately useful.
“You had to click this button, but the button wasn’t very visible, so you didn’t know that you were actually supposed to press the button… I kept going in circles,” Kaur said. “Once I figured it out, it was really useful. Within the next day I got an email [saying] that it had been sent to the college and then I actually got to see my whole transcript online, which is pretty cool.”
American High is the first high school in FUSD to use Parchment for all students, both past and present. Dunsford holds confidence and high hopes in the service, and believes that other schools will join Parchment upon seeing American’s success with it.
“The whole goal I had for putting this into place was for making it easier for our students,” Dunsford said. “You all are used to going on your phone, or your tablet, or your laptop and click-click, get something done. Find something. Move something. So to go through that whole old-fashioned get the paper, put it in the mail, put the postage stamp on it, it’s nuts. Why would we do that if we don’t have to anymore? So it’s all convenience.”
More information on Parchment may be found on the Transcript page of the American High School website. For further assistance, email Ms. Dunsford at sdunsford@fremont.k12.ca.us.
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