The Newsome community has become quite familiar with Profferfish over the past years. Profferfish
has acted as the main digital outlet for logging and approving service hours for each student here at
Newsome. However, with the new 2023-2024 school year came the surprise of the death of Profferfish.
This big change in service formatting has raised a multitude of questions, starting with the most basic:
Why did Profferfish go away?
The website itself is still functioning, but the Hillsborough County school system has simply stopped
purchasing the use of the program for service logging, placing the extra funds towards prioritized causes.
In its place, the county has started a paper system for service hours. Students can now print a service
log from home or pick one up from the guidance office. The form can be filled out for up to 100 hours
from multiple sources and only require one signature per source. Once students fill their forms, they can
turn them in to the guidance office, where the counseling team will approve and input the hours into each
student’s transcript.
According to Newsome’s College and Career Counselor, Mrs. Huether, the death of Profferfish has
inspired mixed reviews. She states that at first, parents and their students were concerned about the
transfer of hours and how to work the new logging system. However, Mrs. Huether has already offered
her assurances that this new system will be simple and smooth: “I can approve 150 submissions per day
and there’s no agency pre-approval needed.”
As for the transfer of hours from Profferfish, no student needs to fear the loss of hours. “If you’re
approved, you should be fine,” states Mrs. Huether, “and any hours that hadn’t gone through Profferfish
can now be logged on paper and put into the system.” Overall, this transition can be seen as a positive
change to ease students’ minds.
With Profferfish completely gone, all student accounts have been archived and cannot be accessed
again. While this may concern some students wanting to see a full description of all volunteer hours,
there is no need to worry due to our trustworthy new system. All volunteer hours are monitored and
approved through the guidance system and logged under each student’s name. Moving forward, Mrs.
Huether and the guidance team recommend that each student keep an itemized log at home of their
volunteer activities since they will no longer get the fully descriptive list of all service hours that Profferfish
once offered. Keeping a personal record of service can come in handy for scholarship and college
applications as students finish their high school careers. As long as students stay informed and keep up
with their service hours, this will be an effortless change!