InformationNOW End of Year Procedures

2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures About this Document This document is intended for districts that do not have Summer School sessions. This information also pertains to districts in which the Summer School sessions are the last terms of the current academic sessions. This document provides an overview of the steps required to successfully end an academic year within InformationNOW. Please note that steps must be completed at each school in the order in which they are listed. Table of Contents 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 1 About this Document...1 Table of Contents...1 Step 1: Create a New Academic Session...2 Step 2: Retain Students...2 Using Quick Entry/Edit to Mark Students Retain on Mass Promote...3 Query List of Retained Students...3 Step 3: Clear Lockers for Outgoing Students...6 Step 4: Promote Students...7 Mass-Promotion & Un-Promotion Changes in Winter 2013 Update...8 Step 5: Post Grades to Transcripts...10 Transcript Posting Logic Changes in Winter 2013 Update...10 Step 6: Update Staff Leave...11 Step 7: Close Academic Session...11 Quick Reference Guide STI_0514131005 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 1

Step 1: Create a New Academic Session An academic session is defined as a timeframe during which a school holds classes. Generally one academic session will be created for the regular school year. Additional academic sessions may also be created for Night School or Summer School. The first step to complete the current academic session is to create a new academic session. This may be done at any time during the current academic session, but is typically done during the spring to facilitate scheduling for the next academic session. A new academic session must be created before the current academic session is closed. When creating the new academic session, users should select to copy terms and then enter the term start/end dates for the new academic session. If term dates are not entered during the creation of the new academic session, they should be entered before the students are promoted. Log in to the new academic session and go to System Preferences Setup. Select Terms from the list and click Refresh. Enter starting and ending dates for the terms. If exact dates are not known, enter approximate dates for the purpose of promoting students and then correct the term dates when they are determined. Note: Refer to the InformationNOW Creating An Academic Session Quick Reference Guide for complete steps, including detailed descriptions of each scheduling model type. MISSOURI ONLY: If creating a summer school academic session, users should not enter term dates. An error will display indicating that students may not be enrolled until term dates. Term dates may be entered after the academic session has been created. Step 2: Retain Students To retain a student, perform the following steps: Note: Students may be retained and then promoted in the current (2012-2013) academic session. Or, users may choose to promote students in the current (2012-2013) school year and then retain students in the current/new academic session depending on state reporting requirements. Please refer to State Guidelines to determine if there are specific steps to take based on the state. Go to the current academic session. For example, if ending the 2012-2013 school year, go to the 2012-2013 academic session. Go to Students Student Maintenance. Search for and select to View the student to be retained. Go to the School tab. Check the Retain on Mass Promote box. Click OK to save the changes. Note: Users may manually mark a student as retained by going to Students Student Maintenance. Search for and select to View a student. Click the Grade Level History link. Insert a record, marking the student as Retained. In most cases, this record should be assigned the date as of the last day of school. However, users should check State Guidelines to determine the proper procedure and timing of retaining students. Quick Reference Guide STI_0514131005 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 2

Using Quick Entry/Edit to Mark Students Retain on Mass Promote Go to Students Quick Entry/Edit. To view all students in the school, do not enter anything under search criteria. To work with a select group of students, enter the search criteria as desired. Under Field Value, select School in the Area drop-list. Then select Retain on Mass Promote in the Field drop-list. Search for Any Value. Students who have already been marked to retain will appear with a 1 (TRUE) next to their names, and students who have NOT been marked to be retained will appear with a 0 (FALSE) next to their names. Click Search. In the screen shot below, two students who need to be marked to be retained on mass promote are NOT marked to be retained. True should be selected under New Value. Select the students to be changed to the new value and then click Apply. This will change the checkbox from unchecked to checked. Query List of Retained Students After the final term of grades has been posted to the transcripts for the current academic session, a Query may be run to generate a list of students who have been retained. Go to Utilities Query Student Transcript. Choose the school and academic session from the drop-lists. Quick Reference Guide STI_0514131005 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 3

Check Academic Session in the Transcript column, then click on the Academic Session link and select Equal To. Enter the Ending Year (as shown below). Click OK to save. Check Term, then click on the Term link. Select Equal To. Under Filter Value, select the last term of the academic session (as shown below). Click OK to save. Quick Reference Guide STI_0514131005 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 4

Check Promotion Status, then click the Promotion Status link and select Equal To. Enter R (for Retained). Click OK to save. Under the Student column, select the data fields to show on the Query. In the example shown below, FName (first name) and Lname (last name) are selected. Click Run to view report. Quick Reference Guide STI_0514131005 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 5

Step 3: Clear Lockers for Outgoing Students For grade levels that will be exiting, lockers should be cleared. For example, for a K-8 building, lockers should be cleared for the outgoing 8 th graders. For a 9-12 high school, lockers should be cleared for outgoing seniors or for all students if new lockers are assigned to all students each year. To clear lockers, perform the following steps: Log in to the 2012-2013 academic session. Go to School/District Lockers. Click the Clear Lockers tab. Click Next. Select the criteria to build the list of students (ex. Grade Level 12). Click Next. Move the student(s) whose lockers are to be cleared to the right hand side of the screen. Click Clear. The list of students who were cleared will display. Note: Refer to the InformationNOW Lockers Quick Reference Guide for complete details regarding lockers. Quick Reference Guide STI_0514131005 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 6

Step 4: Promote Students Before proceeding, do the following: Make sure all data for the current academic session has been entered. Check the applicable State Guidelines to determine if students are to be withdrawn on the last day of school based on state-reporting requirements. Note: To include promotion/retention on report cards and permanent record labels, wait to print report cards and permanent record labels until students have been promoted and grades have been posted to transcripts. **WARNING!**: If Summer School is the first term of the 2013-2014 academic session, and not the end of the 2012-2013 academic session or its own academic session, all students should be promoted at the end of the 2012-2013 session. Then, for students who are to be retained pending the Summer School outcome, users should go to Students Student Maintenance. Select to View a student and click the History link next to the Grade Level. Delete the promotion record. Once the student has completed Summer School, edit the student s Grade Level History again to enter the appropriate promotion or retention record. Eighth grade students in a K-8 district may be handled one of two ways depending on state reporting requirements (check your guidelines): o o To mark 8 th grade students as promoted, go to System Preferences Setup. Select Grade Levels and then click Refresh. Click Add and insert 9 th Grade. Make sure 8 th grade is not marked as Graduated Upon Promotion. To mark 8 th grade students as graduated, go to System Preferences Setup. Select Grade Levels and click Refresh. Make sure 8 th grade is marked as Graduated Upon Promotion. To promote students, perform the following steps: Go to the current academic session. For example, if ending the 2012-2013 school year go to the 2012-2013 academic session. Go to Management Console Console. Click Promote Students. Note: If students were promoted prematurely, they may be unpromoted under Management Console Console Unpromote Students. Quick Reference Guide STI_0514131005 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 7

Click OK. All students will be promoted (except graduates or those who were checked as Retain on Mass Promote; see Step 2: Retain Students on page 2) to the next grade level based on the sequence number of the Grade Level lookup which is created under System Preferences Setup Grade Level. The Promotion Date will be the day after the last day of the current academic session. Students who were registered into the new academic session during creation of a new academic session will be promoted to the next grade level. If the user receives an error message of Effective Date is not a school day when promoting students, go to School/District Setup. Click the Settings tab. Check to Allow enrollment to occur on non-school days. Promote the students following the steps provided. The option may be deselected once promotion is complete. Note: When the new academic session was created, students who are returning to the school as well as students who were promoted up to the school were registered into the new academic session. If students were registered up to a new school but have since been retained, users must un-register those students in the new academic session. For example: if an 8th grader at the junior high was registered into the high school academic session for next year but was since retained, the high school should unregister the retained 8th grader. At the high school, go to next year s academic session and select Students Registration. Search for and select to View the student. When searching, be sure to include Registered students. Place a check next to the File No. for the 8th grade student who was retained and will not be attending the high school. Click Unregister. The retained 8th grader must also be registered in next year s academic session at the junior high. To do so, log in to next year s academic session at the junior high. Go to Students Registration. Search for and select to View the student. When searching, be sure to include Not Registered students. Place a check next to the File No. for the 8th grade student who was retained. Click Register. Complete the fields and click OK. Mass-Promotion & Un-Promotion Changes in Winter 2013 Update Mass Promote Changes The following changes were made to the existing Promote Students functionality under Mgmt Console Console. Users may mass promote as often as they want. The program will look to ensure that the student has not already been promoted. If they have not been promoted, they will be promoted. A new status screen has been added to show promotion results including successes and failures. An error will display if transcripts have already been posted for any term within the academic session. Users should repost transcripts to update the promotion status. The user will receive an error if they are trying to promote students while they are logged in to a future academic session. Quick Reference Guide STI_0514131005 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 8

New Un-Promote Students Option A new option was added to Unpromote Students. To access the new option go to Mgmt Console Console. When the user chooses to unpromote students, the system will remove student grade level changes, update students graduated status and update cached data (i.e., graduated students marked as Is Graduated) that was created as a result of the promote process. The system will display a count and list of student that were successfully un-promoted, as well as a count and any that failed to unpromote, along with any validation messages associated with the failures. If students have not been promoted in the academic session and the user selects to Unpromote Students, a message will display. Once the Unpromote Student process is complete, a screen will display indicating successes and failures. Quick Reference Guide STI_0514131005 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 9

Step 5: Post Grades to Transcripts Regardless of whether or not the school is using transcripts, grades must be posted for all terms of the current academic session before the session can be closed. To post the grades to the transcripts, perform the following steps: Note: This process must be done after retaining/promoting students in order for retention/promotion information to print on report cards and permanent record labels. Go to Management Console Console. Click Post Grades to Transcript. Be sure grades have been posted for each term. Click OK. Note: Refer to the InformationNOW Transcripts Quick Reference Guide for complete details regarding transcripts. Transcript Posting Logic Changes in Winter 2013 Update A change was made to the transcript posting functionality to help alleviate an issue where manually entered transcripts were sometimes overwritten. The change also addresses an issue with how failing grades are posted. Re-Posting Transcripts Under Mgmt Console Console, if a user clicks Post Grades To Transcript and then chooses to Re-Post a term: A new section is added to an existing posted transcript record/term. If a section is manually entered on a posted transcript record, that section will not be overwritten if transcripts are re-posted. Quick Reference Guide STI_0514131005 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 10

An existing section on a posted transcript record/term is edited. Regardless of the edit that is done, if a posted section record is edited (for example for credit or grades) and the term is re-posted, the manual change will be overwritten. A hand-entered transcript record is linked to an existing posted transcript term. Posting will not affect the manually entered term or any manually entered sections that are linked to a posted transcript term. Un-posting Transcripts Under Mgmt Console Console, if a user clicks Unpost Grades To Transcript: A new section is added to an existing posted transcript record/term. Un-posting will not affect the manually entered section on a posted transcript term. An existing section on a posted transcript record/term is edited. The section record will be removed if transcripts are un-posted. A hand-entered transcript record is linked to an existing posted transcript term. Un-posting will not affect the manually entered term or any manually entered sections that is linked to a posted transcript term. Step 6: Update Staff Leave If tracking staff leave, users should update staff leave for the next academic session. Verify the user is logged into the current academic session. Review the settings for the various leave types. Go to Staff Setup. Select Leave Type from the list and click Refresh. Click to View each leave type. Check that the settings are correct under the When resetting staff leave days option. To reset staff leave days, go to Mgmt Console Console. Click Reset Staff Leave Days. Staff leave days will be reset based on options selected in the previous step. Note: Refer to the InformationNOW Staff Quick Reference Guide for complete details regarding staff. Step 7: Close Academic Session **WARNING**: Once an academic session is closed, it cannot be reopened. All data such as grades, attendance, discipline, etc., should be reviewed for accuracy before the academic session is closed. Closing the session does not purge or remove any data. Once an academic session is closed, only those users who have Maintain Closed Academic Session and Access Past Academic Session rights may view or change data. This would include printing any necessary reports. To close the current academic session, perform the following steps: Go to Management Console Console. Click Close Academic Session. Quick Reference Guide STI_0514131005 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 11

Confirm the following: o o o Grades must be posted to transcripts before closing the current academic session. Students should be promoted before closing the current academic session. If not, a warming message will display before the user may proceed. Only a user with rights to maintain a closed academic session can promote once a session is closed. SELF-HOSTED USERS ONLY: A year-end backup must be made. If the backup has been made, check the box to enable the OK button. STI-hosted users data will be backed up by STI at the hosting facility. Once all items have been confirmed, click OK. Quick Reference Guide STI_0514131005 2012-2013 InformationNOW End of Year Procedures 12