Friday, March 27, 2009

End of School Year - graduating 8th graders

Although the 3rd marking period is just ending, its important to share the items that will need to be done at the end of the school year. In many elementary schools the eighth grade graduates and leaves the school prior to the end of the calendar school year. Printing their report cards before the end of the marking period deadline for all grades will be difficult. Once a school goes through the storing process for grades to be printed, it affects the whole school, not just one grade level. Many schools are opting to mail the eighth grade report cards after graduation. Parents can see the grades online until the end of June and will be aware of the grades prior to the arrival of the printed report card.

Eighth graders will need to be transferred out of the school prior to the end of June. PLEASE NOTE: Do NOT transfer eighth grade out before running the report cards. Once you transfer the student out you will not have access to the grades to store or print them. You can transfer them out of the system anytime after printing the report cards - just choose the exit date as the day after graduation.

TO TRANSFER OUT EIGHTH GRADE ONLY:

Once you have logged onto the PowerSchool screen, click on the number "8" for the eight grade class.

When the students names appear in the list, click on the arrow on the empty function box and choose "Transfer out of school."




When the transfer page appears, you will see a statement that says, "(number of students) to be transferred out." Then you have a few choices to make. First, fill in a transfer out date as the day after graduation. Second, choose the reason for the transfer by clicking on the arrow to the right of "Exit Code." The exit code in this case is "Graduation." Do not touch any of the choices in Auto-Transfer Option. The third item is to put a checkmark in the "Check here if student(s) intend to enroll in school during next school year" area. This will allow those students going to our area high schools on the PowerSchool system create the student's freshman schedule prior to the entrance to the school during the summer. It will not affect the children who are not going to the area schools. Lastly, since you are transferring more than one student at this time you will have to put a checkmark in the statement "If more than one student is being transferred out, click this checkbox to verify that you really want to transfer out that many students." Once these steps are completed you can then click submit.

Monday, March 9, 2009

Important!! Upgrade will occur on March 31st

An important upgrade is set for Tuesday, March 31st at 3 pm. This upgrade will fix a few issues that are important in all areas of PowerSchool. The ones that affect teachers the most are: Marking period dates are recorded correctly, the gradebook will now launch with JAVA version 6, and parents will now be able to SEE the checkmarks, late and missing icons!

On the administrative side, you will be able to download your reports and while you wait you can continue to work in PowerSchool. For those who use Quick Import, all non-custom fields can be used.

PowerSchool should be down no more than a few hours. Please make sure you are not logged on and working in the program at this time or you will lose any information that was not saved correctly.

Thank you for your cooperation,