Attendance & School Setup

I’m Sarah Buck. I have been a PowerSchool Admin for 6 years. 3 at the Raytown School

District, and 3 at University Academy in Kansas City, where I am currently. I have been married for a little under 2 years. We got hitched

in Vegas!

Course Outline

• Introduction•School Setup Overview

• School Setup Procedures • Attendance Setup Overview

• Attendance Setup Procedures • Resources

To ensure that data is successfully recorded and accessible in PowerSchool, certain school setup parameters must be

set in PowerSchool at the beginning of each school year.

We will identify many of the school setup items that need to be revisited at the

start of each school year.

School Setup Overview

•Scheduling Setup • Calendar & Related Setup

• Grading Setup • General Setup

Scheduling

• Years & Terms • Periods

• Cycle Days

Scheduling: Years & Terms

• Years & Terms for next year must be setup prior to running EOY.•Remember: When you commit your schedule in PowerScheduler, the years and terms on the live side will be overwritten with the years and

terms in PowerScheduler.

Scheduling: Periods

Set the name, abbreviation, and sort order for each of your periods.

Scheduling: Cycle Days

Set the name, abbreviation, and sort order for each of your cycle days.

Calendar Related Setup • Bell Schedule

• Calendar • Reporting Segments

Bell Schedule

•Bell Schedules are copied over from the previous school year. • Select and attendance conversion method to be used with each bell

schedule.*Note: Attendance Conversion will be covered separately.

Bell Schedule, cont.

•Determine which periods occur in a given bell schedule. • Avoid overlapping periods.

• Determine which periods count toward ADA. • If using the attendance bridge, indicate which period is the bridge period.

Calendar Setup

•Each “in-session” day must be assigned a Cycle Day, Bell Schedule, and a Membership Value.

• If using PowerScheduler, do not setup your calendar until after your schedule is committed.

Reporting Segments

•Update your reporting segments for the upcoming school year. Reporting segments are school specific.

Grading Setup

• Final Grade Setup • Current Grade Display • GPA Student Screens

• Honor Roll • Class Rank

Final Grade Setup

• Setup the final grade store bins in each of your terms.

Current Grade Display

• Set the store codes to be displayed on the Quick Lookup screen. • Set the source of the data to “Gradebook” since you have not yet stored grades for the

upcoming school year. • Set the current grade to one of the earlier store codes, such as Q1 or S1.

GPA Student Screens

• Update any year specific information used in your Data Access Tags (DATs) on the GPA Student Screens. The results of these DATs will be

displayed on the cumulative info screen.

Honor Roll

• Verify the GPA calculations that are used in your honor roll methods.

Class Rank

• Verify the GPA calculations that are used in your class rank methods.

Sub Login Settings

• Update your substitute login password at each school. If you choose to include the current date, the number of the day will precede the

password. For example, if today is January 1st, 2010, and the password is “substitute”, you would have to login using the password “1substitute”.

Section Setup

Attendance Codes

Attendance Code Categories

Attendance Conversions

Full Time Equivalencies (FTEs)

Preferences

Preference Details, cont.

Section Attendance Settings

Quick Lookup Preferences

This is a display setting that only affects how attendance is displayed on the Quick Lookup screen.

District Attendance Preferences

These settings affect attendance display on the Quick Lookup screen and attendance processing.

Resources• Attendance Seminar – ID: 8349

• School Setup Seminar – ID: 8331 • Setting Up Years and Terms – ID: 316 • Final Grade Setup Tutorial – ID: 1584

• Bell Schedule & Calendar Setup – ID: 1627 • Periods & Cycle Days – ID: 2374 • Current Grade Display – ID: 271 • Post-EOY School Setup – ID: 689 • Attendance Code Setup – ID: 782

• Attendance Code Category Setup – ID: 1629 • How it Works – FTEs – ID: 3883

• How it Works – Attendance Codes – ID: 3886 • Quick Lookup Preferences – ID: 3053

Thank you!

Sarah Buckbucks@universityacademy.org