PowerSchool

BRIEF SUMMARY

PowerSchool is a student information system (SIS).

KEY POINTS

• Houses student data and gives users real-time access to student information, including demographics, attendance, enrollment and admissions, fees, scheduling, and graduation planning

RESOURCES

• PowerSchool.com

SHARED WISDOM

• Q: My office was discussing waiver criteria. For the attendance piece, what report is the best to pull to grab this data? We have newer attendance officers and they are saying the only way for us to get this info is to manually add it. I am hoping there is an easier report to pull from PowerSchool.
  • A: Here’s an example of what I use: *Dabs;3/15/2021;3/31/2021.  I’d select the grade level first if that’s what you are needing and then go to “List Students” and type in the code above for the dates you are needing.
• Q: Do any schools have a PDF of 504’s housed in PowerSchool where teachers have access?
  • A: We utilize the ‘apple alerts’. They are created by clicking on Log Entries, and then clicking Edit Discipline Alert. Teachers can all view the apple alerts.
  • A: Would you be able to save it as an attachment on the students page?
  • A: We add a Google link to the 504 accommodations in the Other Alert field (located in the Other Information tab). That way a yellow triangle shows up next to the students and the teachers can just click on the link to their accommodations. We also do this for our SPED and EL students.
  • A: There is a purple folder icon that teachers can click on to access the 504 document. We do something similar for IEPs, safety plans, and health plans.
  • A: We just save them as an attachment. In the Information tab on the left, “attachments” are a choice.
• Q: Our school is in our second year of using PowerSchool, and we realized when military recruiters started asking for student info that we did not have a field saying which students to withhold (because of requests from parents). Does anyone have parent communication they send out informing parents of their rights and giving the option to opt out, and/or methods to handle and record those who opt-out?
  • A: Responses from Counselor Talk (September 2020)
• Q: Does anyone know how to print a roster of username/password information from PowerSchool? We have a success hour and I wanted teachers to have a master copy of login information in case students forget.
  • A: You can do it through enterprise reporting
• Q: Is there a way to denote online only students in PowerSchool?
  • A: Your IT people can set up an activity tag in PowerSchool.  That’s what our corporation has done.
  • We have a computer icon. I think our IT/PowerSchool guru made it happen for us.
  • We created a period 11 and called it virtual and assigned it to an administrator.  It has worked very well to keep track of our students. 
  • Our students had to select on-site or virtual when they registered through PowerSchool and now the virtual students show up yellow in our teachers’ gradebook and the on-site students are blue. Our tech guy probably had to customize some things, but our teachers can see who is who.
  • We created a period outside of the normal day (so we used 9th period since we have periods 1-8 in our building). I enrolled them in classes there with the courses they are taking online.
  • We have marked their homeroom teacher as distance learning. I don’t know if that would work for you, but that’s what we are doing.
  • We created a class for them one hour per day for now to designate them as online only.
  • I am not what we are going with but we talked about making a notification as we do for medical or guardian issues. You know, those little icons up at the top of the screen.
  • There must be because we have three cohorts: Virtual, Carmel, and Greyhound; and our tech people were able to get it to show on the student screen. I’ve included a snip of the screen below. I couldn’t tell you how to do it, but it’s definitely possible!
  • Not sure that everyone has this feature, but we have them indicated under Custom Screens –> Guidance Counselor –> Classroom Type
    

• Q: Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to print out a detailed progress report for a student that lists every class.  I’m needing it to list each assignment and the grade received.
  • A: In quick lookup, you can click on the grade under the term (for us right now it is Q10. ) Then you will see the detailed assignments for that class along with the grade.
• Q: Does anyone know how to manipulate PowerSchool with classes that are set up as year long classes so that we can remove one semester of a year long class?  If we go in and make the classes two semesters will it mess up anything we’ve done with attendance, grades, so far?
  • A: We set up all classes as semester classes at the high school.
  • A: You should be able to go into that section and change it to a semester.  But then you will need to create another section for the opposite semester.
  • A: We just started using Powerschool this year. I believe you would have had to set your full-year courses up as Semester A and Semester B, separate courses for each semester, in order to drop them independently.
  • A: We ran into the same problem a couple years ago and never figured it out so we went to scheduling all of our yearlong classes as two semester classes.
  • A: You have to set your sections into two semesters.
  • A: I ran into this same issue last year and my PowerSchool people told me that you have to set up your master schedule with all semester classes instead of yearlong classes to avoid a headache when you split yearlong classes.
  • A: I had considered setting up our classes as year long but after several conversations with other schools I decided to leave our classes as all semester long. I did read that it was a matter of just changing a date when dropping the year long class. I think either way is tedious whether you have semester or year long classes.
  • A: I did have a fellow counselor tell me she sets it up her courses as year long on powerscheduler but then uses the “split year long classes” button before committing on powerscheduler. This has helped us tremendously this year.
  • A: For scheduling I treated all year long classes as one class. Once the semester starts you can go in and change the duration of the year-long class to semester 1, create a semester 2 class during the same period, and then grab the students from semester 1 and enroll them in semester 2. It takes a little time but worked like a charm. I did this because I needed to drop just a semester of a year-long class.
  • A: There is a way to split the sections into two before you move to the live side.  If you change your current sections to the first semester, you shouldn’t lose anything.
  • A: We also “split” our year-long classes in the spring once the master schedule is set and prior to rollover. This helps tremendously in resolving scheduling conflicts in the spring when they need a semester elective to fit in their schedule the same time as their English class, for example. After the split, you can move English to another period and they no longer have a scheduling conflict. At the same time, it’s beneficial in that it will schedule students with the same teacher for year-long classes during the build as opposed to having all of your classes already in semesters. By splitting the year-long classes after the build, students have continuity of teachers from one semester to the other, yet we have flexibility to move things around to fit in those semester electives, if necessary.
• Q: If you have a course that is weighted due to it being honors, AP, dual credit, how to see that it is in PowerSchool?
  • A: Go into the course setup (on the main screen select school on the left, then select courses under the scheduling header, then select each course.) We have a  separate weighted grade scales that the classes have to be set to.  But some schools don’t.  If you don’t then you can just add GPA added value points.

CONTENT FEEDBACK

If you have suggestions, feedback, or resources, please email counselor1stop@inspiresuccess.org and let us know.