This email was sent by jrhea@wcs.k12.va.us on July 9th.

Now that the End-of-Year process has been completed below are various reminders and tasks to be performed related to preparing PowerSchool at your school for the new year. PLEASE read the whole email thoroughly!

REMINDERS!

STUDENT ENROLLMENTS - All students have been advance (or retained where applicable) to the grade level and school they will be attending in the 2015-16 school year.
*UPDATED: Students enrolled between now and the first day of school will NOW have an enrollment status of ACTIVE. In the past PS would still assign a status of Pre-Registered. This has been fixed since last year. \\*The entry date for all currently active K-12 students (returning and summer registrants) should be 8/10/2015 (the first day of the school year). The entry date for all full time PK students should be 8/19/2015 (PK's first day of the school year). Part time PK students such as speech students may have a different entry date depending on when their services begin. \\*Please remember that all students, regardless of where they are transferring from, should have an entry code of E119 at the beginning of each school year. The only time a student would have a different entry code is if they have been in attendance at another school in the 2015-16 school year (fall). \\*Now that the EOY process is complete you may begin "no showing" students for whom you've gotten an out of district transfer request. Please use the current date as the exit date. You cannot use the first day of school (which typically constitutes a "no show") because that will not remove them from scheduling rosters. We will mass change them to 8/10/2015 once school starts.

NEW USER or TEACHER ACCESS - To gain access to PS/PT please refer new user's to the principal or school technology representative to fill in the appropriate form located athttp:wcs.k12.va.us/documents/computer-account-and-access-request-form. Please do not print out a blank form for new employees to fill out. It needs to be filled out completely online before printing. Also, please assist them in determining what access they need as we are getting forms that are filled out incompletely and/or incorrectly.

GRADUATED STUDENT TRANSCRIPTS - I have ran PowerSchool transcripts for previous year graduates. They can be accessed in the same place they were last year (P:\SRC). There are folders for each school (labeled 2015 PHHS Transcripts, etc.). Please verify that I did not miss any. If so, let us know and we'll run them from our test server and save them to your schools folder.

YEARS AND TERMS - I have took the liberty to make sure all schools Years and Terms are uniform across the division. Please do not change these as they need to remain uniform throughout the year. Our office will adjust them for weather related days missed as the year goes by.

PARENT PORTAL - The parent portal will not be available until around the middle of the first 9 weeks, however you can provide parents of new students with login information before then.

CURRENT TERM - The Term should default to the new school year when logging into PS now (this is another bug that has been fixed since last year).

TASKS!

PERIODS - Middle and High School schedulers need to navigate to Start Page > School Setup > Periods and verify the number of periods for the upcoming school year at your school. With block scheduling the high schools may need to adjust these. Please do not change the period names or abbreviations. Please do not adjust once the school year has began.

BELL SCHEDULE - Middle and High School schedulers, when creating a new year term, PowerSchool copies the bell schedules from the previous school year, eliminating the need to recreate bell schedules from scratch. Bell schedules for each school can be modified on Start Page > School Setup > Bell Schedules. High school bell schedule times may need to be updated to accommodate the block schedules. Do so by choosing Edit Schedule and clicking on each period and adjusting the start and end time. Please do not adjust the other fields on this page as they are set up correctly for reporting purposes.

REPORTING SEGMENTS - Attendance Clerks need to navigate to Start Page > School Setup > Reporting Segments to adjust the start and end dates to reflect the first and last school day of each month. Example, the first school day of August is 8/10/2015 and the last is 8/31/2015. Remember not to use the first or last day of the month if they fall on a weekend or other non school day.

SCHEDULING - PowerScheduler has been made inaccessible. All scheduling tasks MUST be performed on the "live" side of PowerSchool now. There is an Elementary Scheduling Workshop scheduled for July 21st.

Note to Middle and High Schools: I am working on an issue with the calendar setup at each school. You will not be able to see teacher rosters until it is resolved. I will let you know when it has.