The After-School Program

A small local school offers an "extended day program" (EDP), which provides after-school care for children. Parents sign up their children for this program at the beginning of the school year but the program is flexible. The children show up as needed, and parents can pick them up any time during the afternoon program.

At the end of the month, the school office sends out bills to the parents of EDP children. The office bills $8 for each half hour of EDP that the children attended.

Currently, the school uses paper and pencil to keep track of the children that attend the program. Each day the teacher receives a sheet with the names of the registered children, a check-in column, a check-out column, and a signature column. When a child shows up, the EDP teacher enters the time in the respective row; when the child leaves, the teacher enters the time and the parent initials in the signature column. At the end of the month, the office tabulates these entries with a computer and creates a bill for each family.

Recently some generous (?) parent donated an old computer to the school. The principal would now like the EDP teacher to keep track of the children via this computer to relieve the office of some of the manual and labor-intensive data-entry work.