Current Year Scheduling Overview Building a Course Master Adding a Course Adding a Section Adding a Meeting Pattern
Current Year Scheduling
Overview Building a Course Master Adding a Course
Adding a Section
Adding a Meeting Pattern
Overview
The Current Year (CY) Scheduling module is part of the Student Management Core modules
and is used to maintain an entity’s course offerings for students, and also maintain
students’ enrollments in those courses during the current school year. Some entities may
choose to use the more robust features for building course masters and scheduling students
through the Future Scheduling module, but eventually even those entities will have to
update students’ records through the CY Scheduling module.
It is used to add and remove students from courses in any entity and having the ability to
report on that information.
CY Scheduling can be found by navigating under Student Management>Office>Current
Scheduling. Be sure that you are working from a specific entity, as there is very limited
access to the module while working from the district (000) entity.
Building a Course Master Adding a Course
Adding a Section
Adding a Meeting Pattern
The Course Master is the area where the courses for the entity are created and maintained.
This includes section or class information that defines the time of the year the course is
offered, and the meeting pattern of the class that defines what period(s) the class is offered
and what teacher is associated with that class.
To get to the Course Master, navigate under Student Management>Office>Current
Scheduling>Build Course Master>Course Master.
Next to the screen title (Course Master), you can see the school year of the Course Master
you are viewing. If this does not display the correct year, you may need to contact your
Skyward Administrator to confirm the school year set on the entity, or click the Switch
School Year button on the right side.
Adding a Course
You will need to click the Add Course button from the Course Master screen to begin
creating a new course.
When creating a course, section or meeting pattern, you do not need to have a value in
every field unless it is flagged with an * denoting that it is a required field.
The Entity and School Year for the course being added appears at the very top of the screen
for you to verify where the course will be stored.
Curriculum – Use this field to attach this course to a ‘district level’ course. The ‘district
level’ courses or curriculum records are used to be able to track student academic history
through the district through the Curriculum Mapping and Grad Requirements modules. It is
also becoming very common for curriculum records to be used and sometimes even
required for state reporting purposes.
Course Key – Enter the appropriate entity defined ID or code for the course in this field. It
can be alpha-numerical, and may contain special characters as well.
Short Description – Use this field to enter a 15 character description of the course. This
field is used for scheduling and grading reports; it may be used with report cards, and
transcripts.
Long Description – Use this field to enter a 30 character description of the course. This
field is also used for scheduling and grading reports; it may be used with report cards, and
transcripts.
General Properties
Course Length Set – Select the appropriate district defined code. These define the
length of the school year the course will be taught. These are set up under either
Build Course Master Codes, or in the Grading Configuration.
Grade Set – This field is tied to the Course Length Set. To change this, the Course
Length must be changed. The Grade Set defines how many grades will be available
for the courses tied to it.
Course Status – This field can be used to indicate if a course will be offered
(Active), or will not be offered (Inactive) for the school year. This is very helpful for
courses that are offered biannually so that they do not have to be recreated every
other year.
Elective/Required – This field is used for the automatic scheduling processes which
will schedule required courses before elective ones, with the possible exception of a
single section course.
Category – Select the most appropriate category of the course.
Regular – Most classes will be marked as this. If none of the other options fit,
select this value.
Lunch – If your entity schedules students into a course for their Lunch time,
then select this value for those courses.
Study Hall – If students are scheduled into courses when they have no other
class scheduled, you can attach this value to those courses. The Study
Hall Scheduler utility will use this flag to update student’s schedules.
Transfer – Select this value for courses that are added to student’s grade
history for courses that are taken out of the district. This option attached
to a course will allow the user to change the description of it when adding
to a student’s grade history.
Waiver – This category is used with the Grad Requirements module to waive a
student’s required course.
Schedule Type – This field is used to tell the software how student requests for the
course should be handled during a scheduling run or when using the Walk-in
Scheduler. Manually Scheduled and Special Education courses will only allow
students to be scheduled into the courses manually. Dropped Course should be used
if a course will no longer be offered. A report can then be run to see what students
requested the dropped courses, so they can have their requests updated.
Scheduling Priority – This field can be used to set a priority on a course when the
system is building students’ schedules. The higher a priority, the earlier in the run
the course will be scheduled for the student.
Grading System – This field is used for internal reporting purposes only. The value
of this field will not change any functionality for the course or its gradebook. It can
be pulled on to some reports for organizational purposes only. Select the value that
best fits the course.
Grading Type – This field is used for internal reporting purposes only. The value of
this field will not change any functionality for the course, or its gradebook. It can be
pulled on to some reports for organizational purposes only. Select the value that best
fits the course.
Transcript GLO – This field is used to override the grade the student is in when
they took this course when the record is pulled onto a transcript. Instead of a course
taken by a middle school student for high school credit showing as being completed
in 8th Grade, this field can change it so that the course appears it was taken during
9th Grade (if the Transcript GLO is 9).
Website Address – A URL can be entered in this field to show as a link from the
Course in Family/Student Access.
Website Display – Text can be entered for this field to display as hyperlinked text
that guardians or students would click on to access the Website Address in the field
above.
GPA Set [#] – There will be one line of this field for each GPA Method that has been
created in the entity. For each Method, enter the appropriate GPA Set that should be
used to determine the point scale used in calculating this course into a student’s
GPA.
GPA Credits [#] – There will be one line of this field for each GPA Method that has
been created in the entity as well. Each Method will need the number of credits to
use in calculating the course into the students’ GPAs.
Control Sets Possible – Based on the Course Length selected, this field will display
all of the Control Sets tied it.
Subject – These codes are district defined, and can be used to group courses
together for some settings, reports, and even transcripts.
Type – These codes are district defined and used as another way to group courses
together for reporting purposes. Common codes used include Regular, Special
Education, and Vocational Education.
Department – These codes are also district defined and are used as another way to
group courses together. Typically these codes may be similar to Subjects, but are
more broad than that
Activity Link – You can use this field to connect this course to an activity. When an
Activity is entered here, and the ‘Automatically Add Students to the Activities that
are Linked to a Course’ is selected in the configuration, then a process will enroll
students scheduled into the class into the activity.
Report Card – This field is usually used for an entity that has semesterized
schedules (courses that last all year are split into two separate ones in the course
master for more flexible scheduling for students). This allows you to link those
separate classes so that when they pull on the Report Card, they will pull as one
class instead of two separate ones.
Lock Group – This field allows two or more semester courses to be scheduled into
separate semesters, or keeps courses from being scheduled at the same time. This is
mainly used for Future Scheduling.
Current Requests – This will display the total number of requests that have been
entered for this course. This is helpful when working through the Future Scheduling
Process.
Maximum Seats Available – This will display the total number of seats available
based on the combined maximum class sizes entered on the course’s sections. This
is helpful when building the master schedule in Future Scheduling.
Estimated Nbr of Sections – This field is used for Future Scheduling purposes. A
utility can be used to update the field based on the number of entered requests.
Actual Nbr of Sections – This will display the total number of sections that are
attached to the course, and is helpful for Future Scheduling.
Grade Ranges – You can enter the low and high grade levels of students that could
be enrolled in this course. This will limit the courses available for request entry
through the Walk-In Scheduler and Future Scheduling for a student.
Fees – You can enter the amount of a fee, if any, for a student taking the course.
This field is not tied to the Fee Management module, but can be pulled on some
scheduling reports.
Academic Hours – This field can be used as an alternate way to track the amount
of courses a student is enrolled in instead of tracking the earned credits. This could
be used by elementary or middle schools that do not track credits.
Earned Credits – Enter the number of credits awarded to the student after
completing the requirements of the course. This value is not used in the calculation
of a student’s GPA.
Core Academic Subject – Check this box if the course is part of the district’s core
academic subjects.
Grade Course – Check this box if the course should have grades collected.
Keep Attendance – Check this box if the course will be available for keeping
attendance through Educator Access+.
Repeatable for Credit – Check this box if a student can take the course any
number of times and continuously receive earned credit for it. This is often used for
courses like band or choir. A report can be used to verify students requesting
courses they have passed, and are not marked as repeatable for credit.
Locked to Scheduler – Check this box if the course should not have students either
scheduled or unscheduled in this course through the respective scheduling utilities. It
will prevent any modification from happening to students regarding this course.
Allow Teacher Conferences – Check this box if conferences can be scheduled for
this course.
Default Course for Career Plan - The Default Course for Career Plan box is
designed for districts that have multiple courses attached to a single Curriculum
Master record. With this box checked, it will default the course as the course to be
completed for the career plan.
Qualifications – These can be added to the course so that the Advanced Master
Builder process in Future Scheduling will look at staff qualification records to
determine which ones could be assigned as a teacher of the course.
Course Groups – These codes are district defined and can be added to courses to
pull special indicators when they print on students’ transcripts.
Section Defaults – The fields here can be filled out so that when adding new sections to
the course, these fields would be pre-filled with the specified values.
State Specific – Each state may have their own fields used for state reporting purposes. It
is up to you to verify that they are filled out correctly.
Once all the data on the course has been entered and verified, click the Save button to
continue. If you plan on creating a section immediately you can click the Save and Add
Section button.
Adding a Section
If a section needs to be added after the course has been saved, expand the course and then
click the Add Section link next to Section Details.
If you clicked the Save and Add Section button from the course screen, your section
maintenance screen should already be showing.
Sections may be referred to in other areas of the software as a class. So remember that
class = section of a course.
The entity, school year, course, and request information will all display at the top of the Add
Section screen for you to verify you are working with the correct record.
Section – You can enter the ID value of the section. This can be a three character alpha-
numeric value. It is best to use leading zeros if you think you might use numbers 1-10 (or
higher). This will keep the sections listed in the correct ascending order.
General Properties
Class Status – This field can be used to prevent students from being scheduled into
a section of a course if it was previously needed but no longer is by setting it to
‘Inactive’. It is possible to just delete the unneeded section as well.
Class Control Set – This value identifies when during the school year the course will
be offered. The options available here depend on the setup of the Course Length that
is attached to the course.
Calendar – Select the appropriate calendar that identifies the days that this course
will need to have attendance taken.
Scheduling Team – If your entity is using team scheduling, you can select the team
that this section should be used with.
Bell Schedule – Enter the code for the Bell Schedule that represents the times that
this section will typically follow.
Bilingual – If the class is taught bilingually, this option should be selected. Some
state reports will pull from this field.
Use Class Meeting Time Override – When this option is checked, a separate time
can be entered on the meeting pattern for when the course should actually meet.
Default Building – Enter the building that will house this class. This will fill in on the
meeting pattern when created.
Minimum Students – Enter the minimum number of student to offer the class.
Optimum Students – Enter the ideal number of students for the class.
Maximum Students – Enter the maximum number of students that can be enrolled
in this one section of the class.
Attendance Method – Select the method of attendance entry that will be used for
the class. Attendance can always be entered through the Student Profile or
Office>Attendance no matter what option is selected.
Computer – Allows entry through Educator Access Plus (EA+).
Sheets – Allows entry through scan sheets only.
Mixed – Allows entry through both EA+ and scan sheets.
Assign Seats – This option used to need to be checked to allow teacher the ability
to create a seating chart for the class in EA+. However, it no longer has any control
over the seating chart functionality.
Rows/Columns – Enter the default number of rows and columns for the teacher of
the section to see when they work with the seating chart. They will have the ability
to override these values.
Grading Method – Select the method of grading entry that will be used for the
class. Grading can always be entered through the Student Profile or Office>Grading
no matter what option is selected.
Computer – Allows entry through Educator Access Plus (EA+).
Sheets – Allows entry through scan sheets only.
Mixed – Allows entry through both EA+ and scan sheets.
Room Type – Select the appropriate type of room that the course can be held in.
This is used during Future Scheduling processes.
State Specific – Each state may have their own fields used for state reporting purposes. It
is up to you to verify that they are filled out correctly.
Once all the data on the section has been entered and verified, click the Save button to
continue. If you plan on creating a meeting pattern immediately you can click the Save and
Add Meet button.
Additional sections can be added to a course as needed, and at any time. To do this, click
the Add Section link next to the Section Details area of the expanded course.
Adding a Meeting Pattern
Meeting Patterns (or Meets) are used to indicate when a class will be offered, and what
teacher will be teaching it for the different terms. Meets also provide teachers with access to
the class information through EA+, and so additional meets may be used to attach other
staff to the class as well. These people could include long-term substitute teachers, student
teachers/interns, support staff that need to take attendance, and even other teachers in
team teaching situations.
Additional Meets may be added when a class meets for more than one period in a day (i.e.
in a block schedule), or in cases where attendance is entered for a class once during the day
and it needs to automatically fill in additional periods as well (i.e. elementary schools that
take attendance in the morning and they want it to fill in the afternoon period as well).
If a meet needs to be added after the section has been saved, expand the course and then
click the Add Meet link on the line of the section it will be attached to.
If you clicked the Save and Add Meet button from the section screen, your meeting pattern
maintenance screen should already be showing.
The entity, course, and section information will display at the top of the screen for you to
verify that the meet you are creating is for the correct class.
Start and Stop Terms
Display Term Start/Stop – Enter the terms that the class will display on reports as
meeting. One of the only times this would be lower than the full length of the class
would be if there were different teachers teaching one term to the next. In this case
there would be more than one meet attached to the section.
Scheduling Term Start/Stop – Enter the terms that the class will take up in the
student’s schedule. One of the only times this would be lower than the full length of
the class would be if there were different teachers teaching one term to the next. In
this case there would be more than one meet attached to the section.
Usually the Display and Scheduling Terms will match each other.
Meet Pattern
Display Period – Enter the period of the day that this class will display on students’
schedules.
Display – Select the days or rotation days that the class will display as meeting on
the students’ schedules.
Scheduling Period – Enter the period of the day that this class will be scheduled for
students.
Scheduling – Select the days or rotation days that the class will be scheduled for
students.
Attendance Period – Enter the period of the day that this class will have its
attendance recorded into.
Attendance – Select the days or rotation days that the class’s attendance can be
kept.
Lunch Code – Select the lunch code that will be associated with the class meet. The code
will show on the student’s schedule.
Building – Select the code of the building that the class will be held in.
Room – Select the room that the class will be held in. The rooms available will depend on
the Building code selected.
Teacher – Enter the Namekey of the teacher of the class. Verify that you have selected the
correct one in case there happens to be duplicate names.
Teacher Type – Select the teacher type for the teacher entered on the meet. There must
be one Primary Teacher for each term, and there cannot be more than one. There is no limit
to the number of Alternate Teachers for a class.
Display this Class Meet on Student Schedules – Check this option if the details from
this meet should be showing on a student’s printed schedule. This should be unchecked in
cases where an alternate teacher does not need to show on the printed schedule (student
teachers, support staff, etc…)
Allow Access to EA+ – This option should be checked if the teacher on the meet should
see the course in EA+. For any meet with a primary teacher, this will automatically be
checked.
Allow Access to Gradebook – This option should be checked if the teacher on the meet
should be able to get into the Gradebook of the course in EA+. For any meet with a primary
teacher, this will automatically be checked. Typically this would be unchecked for a meet
that the teacher only needs access to take attendance or view the students of a course in
EA+, but has no responsibilities with the gradebook (i.e. support staff).
Class Meeting Time Override – Enter the class start and stop times if the option Use
Class Meeting Time Override was checked on the section. This field could be used when
tracking attendance by minutes and is not common.
Class Meet Type – This field is for reporting purposes only, but may have an effect on
some state reports. Select the option that best fits the type of meet of this class.
State Specific – Each state may have their own fields used for state reporting purposes. It
is up to you to verify that they are filled out correctly.
Once all the data on the section has been entered and verified, click the Save button to
continue. Additional meets can be added to the sections as needed, and at any time. To do
this, click the Add Meet link on the line of the section it needs to be added to.