Extended care registration will reopen in July for Waterloo Region schools

Parents and caregivers who ran into technical problems with Waterloo Region’s registration system for before and after school programs have a new date to circle on their calendars.

The system, called OneList, will reopen in early July after officials said overwhelming demand caused the system to malfunction on June 17.

Registration will open for students with the Waterloo Region District School Board at 8 a.m. on July 2, while registration opens for Waterloo Catholic District School Board students at 8 a.m. on July 3.

A new update, sent to parents and guardians, said those who previously completed the registration process and received a confirmation message will not have to log back into the system.

Anyone who experienced issues with the system and was not able to complete registration will have until 11:59 p.m. on July 12 to submit their request for extended care.

Officials say days will be allocated based on when parents and guardians first attempted to login on June 17, when the system malfunctioned.

Confirmation emails will be sent out the week of July 15.

Malfunction frustration

“I was there from 8:30 a.m. [and] all the way to about 3:00 p.m., until I finally gave up because I just kept refreshing and retrying and retrying. It was basically my full time job… trying to register my kid,” Krista Soble, a frustrated parent, told CTV News about the June 17 malfunction. “It’s almost like the Hunger Games.”

According to OneHSN, the company behind OneList, the issue stemmed from a Canada-wide policy change on before and after school care.

They previously said students already enrolled in a program would automatically have a spot next year. This year, because of the Canada-wide Early Learning Program which necessitates the licensing of the school board programs, every student must be re-registered.

“It's essentially a competition process now that has to occur in the late part of June, early part of July for those September spaces,” Darryl Buck, president and CEO of OneHSN, explained.

He said the OneList software required significant structural change and, although thoroughly tested, the system ultimately could not keep up with the demand.

“We had no means of testing the demand that hit the system all at once,” said Buck.

For parents like Soble the website malfunction was frustrating, but it was the lack in communication from the school board that she found the most upsetting.

“They didn't let us know that there was a technical issue until after 5:00 p.m. so that's a whole working day of trying to get this system to work,” Soble said.

-- With reporting from Jeff Pickel