We’ll try to report the committee work to this post. Follow our progress!
PowerSchool Review Committee Work Space
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We’ll try to report the committee work to this post. Follow our progress!
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PowerSchool Review Committee(Online) Meeting #1 AGENDA
April 28, 2011 3:30 pm
History of Student Information Systems at KPBSD
PowerSchool Committee Duties
Assignments for Members:
Review the Powerschool Blog http://blogs.kpbsd.k12.ak.us/wpmu/category/powerschool/
Review https://powersource.pearsonschoolsystems.com/login.action for training videos (give password)
Recommend what you need in the future
Notes from the meeting were in Microsoft Word outline format which didn’t post to the blog well, so go to this link :
http://www.kpbsd.k12.ak.us/students_parents.aspx?id=21343
Click on the History of SIS
We got this link from PowerSchool. It is a recorded Webex that Donna Lester thinks is a pretty good basic overview if you don’t know anything about the product. Donna says watch the first 38 minutes and bail out when they get to the questions.
https://pearsononline.webex.com/pearsononline/ldr.php?AT=pb&SP=MC&rID=17802137&rKey=34563627d5e2356a
Monday, May 2, 2011 3:00pm. We held another online committee meeeting. This meeting (v1.1) was a repeat of the Thursday, April 28 3:30 pm meeting (v1.0). Same content, different committee members in attendance.
I like what I see in the counselor dashboard. I would like to see what is available to see as a parent looking in. Most tasks are pretty straightforward…may be a few too many places to screw up. (like our caps only in discovery). I am working at adding classes, backloading to see if I can get it.
I think if we have a class or two to play with, I can look at all the parts better. Can you set that up?
I think you have talked to Dave this morning. The classes are all in there now.
Dave has set you up to view his kids as if you were the parent. I will send you the login info via email.
Jim
I looked at the teacher and secretary comments today, the sample parent view of the “Edline” equivalent (Dave’s kids) as well as some of the training videos. The training videos were very slow to download at home but that is probably my creeping, crawling DSL problem. Viewing the videos did, however, bring to mind Steve Klaich’s comment about face to face training as well as online video segments. I am glad that will be part of the process if we go this route. The positive comments from the teachers/secretaries as well as the positive responses from the IT folks are very encouraging. I especially like three apparent PS features: The easy teacher access to gradebooks, etc. from home, the ability of our district and creative IT team to rewrite programs to fit our needs, and the “one stop shopping” ability to access, edit and display all this information. Maybe PS will make it easier for the “Right hand to know what the left hand is doing”.
Here are some issues Information Services has found with PowerSchool. Some we have resolutions for, some not, but no show-stoppers in this batch for us. Certainly not a complete list. My folks are going 100MPH and documentation is always the last thing done… but these items are of interest and worthy of your review.
1. All Student Demographics will be imported into PowerSchool.
2. Enrollment History will be imported as far back as 1991, nothing older due to Power School limitations.
3. The district course master was renumbered in 2005. Because of how Power School handles the DCML (not year driven) we will only be importing the DCML from 2006 forward.
4. PS handles dual enrollment very differently than Discovery. Students are only enrolled in 1 school, however, a student can “enroll in a course from another school”. This concept is very different than we are accustomed to. We will need to indicate on the student schedule screen(s) that the specific course is being taken at a different KPBSD school. We will also need to create reports or custom screens to allow schools to see total numbers of students taking courses at different schools. If a student is receiving Sped services at a different KPBSD school, we will need to indicate this on the Special Programs screen.
5. Because of this new dual enroll concept, Distance Delivery will have its own school number but will not be included in any state reporting.
6. Elementary students will be enrolled in grade level equivalent course IDs. When a student is enrolled in a home room, the student will be automatically enrolled in the core elementary courses. These courses will be added to the course master and will be grade specific (i.e. 1st Gr Math). All elementary teachers will be expected (?) to use the PS gradebook as we will now be storing elementary grades in the SIS.
7. PS does very little by default with regard to concurrent record validation. Users editing the same screen in different locations had the potential of overwriting each other’s changes. We’ve developed and are testing a custom solution to perform screen-level concurrent record validation prior to data being permanently saved to the PS database. Users will be alerted if any conflicting record edits have occurred.
8. PS does very little by default with regard to data validation. Many fields in PS are free-form text boxes. We have written and are testing a custom solution allowing field-level data validation to be defined. For instance, we can ensure that any field (one or many) on any particular screen meets validation rules prior to the data being posted to the PS database (date validation, range validation – date x must fall before date y, numeric, non-numeric, etc.).
9. We are concerned about reporting limitations. At this time the data sets available for reporting are limited, and the report writing tool is weak.
10. In Discovery, secretaries can only change demographic information for students at their school. PS allows secretaries to (optionally) change demographic data for all family members in the district.
11. Summer School in Discovery is handled by adding a third term for those schools offering the program. In PS we will have an actual school for each building which holds summer school, i.e. SOHI Summer School, Skyview Summer School, etc. The enrollment information in these schools will not be included in any state reporting.
12. Student schedules (periods) will be changed to match the clock. i.e., SOHI’s homeroom is period 7 in Discovery but will be period 3 in PS as it occurs after period 2 in the student day.
13. Grade processing is handled a bit different in PS. In Discovery, when a course is completed prior to the end of a semester, the secretary simply enters the grade for that student, and credit is awarded. In PS, the course/grade data would need to be manually stored (similar to the Discovery backloading process) for the student, or the secretary would have to wait until the end of the semester to award credit during the “end of semester grade processing”. We will need to analyze this further and test other alternatives as this is a common occurrence, especially for Distance Ed, Connections, and the alternative schools.
14. Teachers will take attendance in Power School, as they do in Discovery. Secretaries will also modify and enter attendance. PS is limited in its attendance taking abilities for the secretary. Discovery allows secretaries to view and modify attendance for an entire day, an entire class, or a specific student. PS only allows modifications on the student level, or mass update level. We need to check into creating additional attendance screens for the secretaries.
15. Windows passwords for staff are going to have to be stronger if teachers are going to be doing grades from home. This can be automatically enforced by the system, but we know from past attempts some staff will feel inconvenienced.
How about the grade reports for eligibility to participate in school activities (mostly sports). Connections students can participate on school teams but their eligibility needs to be verified at the same time as other students. Of course some Connections students attend classes in traditional schools also. Will this be a problem with PS and the way it deals with dual enrollment.
Good question, Bill. There isn’t anything per se in PowerSchool to handle eligibility. There wasn’t in Discovery, either. We will have to custom write a screen or report to handle eligibility in PowerSchool just as we did in Discovery. Nobody has looked in detail at it so we don’t have a plan yet. It is just one of the things that will have to be handled this summer. I am of the mind that we can begin the school year with eligibility being run from Discovery, if need be, since schools are being told they must have schedules done before school ends. I think football will have started before any secretaries are trained on PowerSchool anyway, so by default we may start the year with eligibility run from Discovery.
Donna checked with some secretaries and it would work best if we have Eligibility in PowerSchool for the fall. That way kids transferring in from other district schools would show up – they wouldn’t on Discovery in they enroll in the fall.
Bottom line: Discovery will be our fall back for eligibility, but we’ll be shooting for Eligibility in PowerSchool.
How long will Discovery be active after we make the changeover to PS? I attended the Skyview Site Council meeting yesterday and there was discussion about Powerschool and Discovery. Everyone was positive about making the change.
We have a perpetual license for Discovery, which means we can keep using it. We will not continue to pay for support of the Discovery product though (due June 2011, I think). This means we won’t have access to ESD’s phone support but I’m not too worried about that.
Sometime into summer we will change security access to Discovery to Read-only, so staff will be able to look at the screens and run reports but not alter the data. Discovery will probably be around forever as a reference but I would suspect active use wil cycle down pretty fast. Data from 1985-1990 won’t be in PowerSchool.
A Request For Proposal (RFP) has gone out for the Dell server hardware for PowerSchool. Due date 6/3. An RFP for Microsorft and VMWare server software should follow today. This is just one of the many things we have to prepare for to have everything in place in early August. Should either group bail on PowerSchool we wouldn’t award the hardware and software RFPs. Like many other things, we can’t wait until our May 31 deadline or we will run out of time.
On Tuesday, May 24th, the PowerSchool Review committee voted unanimously (10-0) in support of the PowerSchool software and also for moving forward with the implementation next fall.
The plan is to start school next fall on the PowerSchool software. Staff training begins August 8th and 9th for Secretaries and Counselors. Selected train-the-trainer teachers, one from each school, will be trained on gradebook etc, and will in turn train teachers back at the schools near the start of school. Nurse training will be August 12th.
If you see a member of the committee, please thank them for their efforts on behalf of all staff. Committee members are
Vaughn Dosko, Debbie Tressler, Stephanie Jones, Bill Noomah, Darcy Mueller, Martha Fleming, Naomi Walsworth, Bill Holt, and Sean Dusek.
See you all in the fall!