Home Base Maintenance Window Set for Tonight at 7 p.m.

PowerSchool and the NCDPI Home Base Team have scheduled a maintenance window for tonight from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. Saturday morning. This additional maintenance is required to deploy critical state reporting updates. Currently, PowerSchool is the only known Home Base application that will undergo maintenance.  All other Home Base applications will remain available.

Please notify your staff and teachers of this maintenance.  

Note:  Each year, a list of scheduled maintenance windows are published by NCDPI.  This is published in advance to help teachers and administrators better prepare for temporary outages and loss of access.  Please review the 2021-2022 maintenance schedule and put these dates on your calendar. In most cases, the entire window is not necessary and we can return systems to service earlier than listed. If emergency maintenance is required in addition to these scheduled dates, all users will be notified in advance.

2020-2021 End of Year Process

The 2020-21 EOY Process for the Home Base suite of applications will begin Wednesday, June 30, 2021. Home Base will be taken offline on Wednesday at 5:00 p.m. EOY processing and archiving of data will start on Thursday morning, July 1, 2021. 

Please review the PowerSchool End of Year User Guide in its entirety to ensure your PSU is ready for EOY.  The guide is located on the Home Base website’s NC SIS Resource Page. A video version of the guide is also available on the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction's YouTube page.

EOY Q&A Recording

Need answers to EOY questions? The Home Base Team hosted a live Q&A session on Wednesday, June 23 where several PSUs asked questions and received answers pertaining to the EOY process.  Please use the following link to access the recording:  https://youtu.be/L1xPir-vaPg.   

Reminders: 

EOY preparation is key to a smooth Pre and Post EOY process.

Please adhere to the following reminders to ensure a smooth EOY transition:

EOY Pre-Validation (EPV) Reports

A new set of reports were added to the North Carolina state reporting dashboard. These EOY Pre-Validation (EPV) reports are to assist users in identifying items that need to be corrected or reviewed before running EOY. Schools will have the ability to run these reports through June 30. PSUs should continuously run these reports throughout the reporting window to capture any erroneous records that have been created since the last run date. 

PSUs also need to run the EOY Validation.  See navigation below:

Navigation: Start Page > System Setup > End-of-Year Process > Perform EOY Validation

Eddie Feed

Please be reminded that the Educational Directory and Demographical Information Exchange (EDDIE) feed to PowerSchool has been disabled. PSUs may now begin submitting cases to PowerSchool support to add new schools and grade levels to their PowerSchool instance in preparation for the 2021-2022 school year. All changes made in PowerSchool for the current year, before EOY and after the EDDIE feed was disabled, must be updated in EDDIE manually before the feed to PowerSchool is reenabled. If the data is not accurately reflected in both PowerSchool and EDDIE when the sync is enabled after EOY, these changes will be overwritten by EDDIE since it is the authoritative source. 

Setup of Program Schools

School Numbers Below 300 – Program and PSU-Created Schools

All PSUs have schools that were created with school numbers below 300. Pre-EOY work is required at each of these schools (see the Pre-EOY Steps section in the EOY User Guide for specific steps). These schools are not connected to EDDIE, nor are they used in state compliance reporting. However, these schools are often used for Federal reporting or created for specific NC requirements.

If you have any questions concerning EOY, please contact the Home Base Team at home_base@dpi.nc.gov.

Schoolnet End of Year

As the statewide end-of-year process draws near, we wanted to remind PSU Schoolnet leads of a few details. These are common questions we’ve received:

1. Schoolnet enrollments are entirely driven by the school and class section enrollment dates in PowerSchool. When a term or school year ends in PowerSchool, the class sections in Schoolnet are no longer current or active. Teachers can still access reports for their concluded class sections by navigating to the Reporting Dashboard and setting the “Results Reflect” drop-down at the top right to “All Students” as shown below; however, they cannot assign additional tests or otherwise have students complete work.
   
   
2. Keep in mind that because Schoolnet relies on PowerSchool for student data, it is not available for student use over the summer because we do not use PowerSchool for summer school grades and attendance.
   
   
3. Teachers may continue to access Schoolnet over the summer. They can view reports for any past course they taught within their current school, and they can build draft assessments for the upcoming school year. However, it is not possible to schedule, assign, or administer a test until the 2021-2022 school year begins.
   
   
4. Schoolnet EOY will begin concurrently with PowerSchool EOY on June 30, 2021. The system may be unavailable during this time. The training site will remain available throughout EOY processing.
   
   
5. The Schoolnet integration with PowerSchool will not begin pulling 2021-2022 rostering data until after EOY. As in previous years, the Student Workspaces feature will be temporarily disabled after EOY to prevent students from previewing next year schedules. We will re-enable the feature in early August.
   
   
6. Remember that teachers who are leaving a PSU may be owners of co-authored assessments or shared item banks. If other teachers at the school will need these items next year, be sure the departing teacher adds appropriate co-authors to tests and/or grants management rights to shared item banks.

NCEES End-of-Year 2020-21 Archival Plan

NOTICE: All Evaluations and Professional Development Plans will be archived after close of business on Wednesday, June 30, 2021, 5 PM EST. Once Archived the plans are no longer editable.

NCDPI recommends that all plan activities be completed and locked by June 29, 2021. Administrators are also encouraged to run the Reporting > Quick Reports > Summary Evaluation Reports and any other reports needed for review and planning for the 2021-2022 school year.

More EOY information has been sent out in the weekly NCEES Updates bulletins since 5/14/2021. NCEES assigned District Administrators you can find links to these bulletins on the NCEES Home page in the DA Dispatch channel.

Individual Student Reports in PowerSchool

Currently, select schools are piloting this, but the link will be viewable to everyone.  The ISR link is at the bottom of the left menu bar in the parent portal listed as State Test Reports. Only parents of students in the pilot schools will be able to see the ISR. All others will see a message stating no reports are available.

Upon successful piloting, populating ISRs into the PowerSchool Parent Portal will become available to all public school units in the 2021-2022 school year. We wanted to make you aware of this addition in the event there are questions from parents or others.

Reminder:  Primary GDV Update

The NCDPI Home Base Team has been receiving many questions regarding the following scenario:
 

1. A prospective graduate student withdrew and has returned for summer school.
2. The student did not re-enroll in an NC public school prior to the last day of school.
3. The student is participating in Summer School and expected to complete the graduation requirements prior to EOY.

 
To ensure this student is reflected on the Preliminary GDV, please adhere to the following:

1. Enroll the student on the day prior to the last day of school. (For example, if the last day of school is 6/2, enroll the student on 6/1.) 
   • Note: The student does not need a schedule. 
2. Enter the appropriate grades for this student on the Historical Grades screen.
3. Enter the appropriate graduate information on the NC Academics screen. 
4. If the student completes graduation requirements prior to EOY (7/1/2021), enter the appropriate information on the Scheduling Setup screen, and they will be graduated by the EOY process:  
   • Next Grade: 99 
   • Next School: Graduated Students

The Month 9 PMR should be completed, verified, and approved prior to completing these steps. These students should not appear on PMR9. Once the above steps are completed, the student should appear on the Preliminary GDV report. Rerunning the PMR will cause the updated students to show on the report with fatal errors.

Reminder:  School Extension Reporting Technical Webinar, Slides and FAQs

The Home Base Team participated in the School Extension Reporting Technical Webinar. The webinar recording, slides, and FAQ can be accessed using the links below to assist users who were unable to attend and for those who would like a refresher.   If you have questions pertaining to this process, please contact the Home Base Team at home_base@dpi.nc.gov.

Slides: http://bit.ly/SL2021-7

Recording: https://youtu.be/LR3VPGFB8Kc

FAQ: http://bit.ly/SL2021-7_FAQ

Reminder:  Instructure (Canvas) Contract Extended

We are excited to extend our partnership with Instructure (Canvas) through 2023.  The SBE and NCDPI have entered into a 2-year contract extension that is in its final stages of the internal process at NCDPI.  Canvas costs will rise 5% to account for increases in operational costs. This is the first price increase for contracted users since the beginning of the contract in 2015.

New features for 21-22 include: 

• New K-5 dashboard to support elementary learners 
• Deeper integration with Microsoft including free access to Immersive Reader and Teams
• State negotiated volume pricing to our video engagement and analytics tool - Canvas Studio

The Canvas renewal process will continue to provide an easy and smooth process to purchase products and services. Here is a summary of how this amendment impacts your Canvas Contract:

• The amendment extends to June 30, 2023. Whenever your current contract ends, it will renew with an end date of June 30, 2023. 
• The cost of Canvas LMS + 24x7 Support Bundle is increasing 5%. This means if you were paying  $3.74, you’ll now pay $3.93, and if you are paying $3.92, you’ll now pay $4.12 (Previous price was dependent on when you opted into the Canvas State Contract Pricing).
• If you are just starting with a new Canvas contract, you’ll pay $4.12 (Minimum license amount of $3,500) and an implementation fee of $5,500.
• Tier 1 Support (24x7 access to support for all teachers and administrators) remains $1 per user. Tier 1 Support new users can be added with an additional $500 setup fee.
• Canvas Studio can now be added to your Canvas contract at $1 per user (Minimum license amount of $1,500), $1,500 implementation fee for new Studio users.

Please reach out to your Canvas Customer Success Manager with any questions about the renewal process.

Reminder:  New Technical Contact PowerSchool IPT Certification in August 2021

In collaboration with PowerSchool, the Home Base Team will be offering virtual IPT certification training for new technical contacts from August 2-6, 2021:

• This training will span five full days. 
• Participants will have 90 days to take and pass the certification test after training. 
• Each PSU is allowed a certain number of technical contacts based on their ADM. 

If you are unsure of your current technical contacts, please contact PowerSchool Support at 1-855-339-4790. 

NCDPI has created an IPT FAQ document to help answer questions you may have. Please review this document for frequently asked questions about the training and certification.

Those who can attend the DPI offered IPT Training include: 

• Anyone who is replacing a certified technical contact for their PSU.
• A local charter school employee, not employed by a third-party company and has not previously attended IPT training.

Those who cannot attend this training are: 

• Third-party Charter school SIS management company employees
• PSUs wanting additional technical contacts above their desired allocation
• Anyone who has attended training previously. 

Note: Anyone who is not eligible for this training will need to arrange training and certification through the vendor, PowerSchool, and cover the cost incurred. To do so, please reach out to the PowerSchool training team, training@powerschool.com.   

Those who are eligible for this training session, please fill out the registration form.

𝐑𝐞𝐠𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐅𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝐉𝐮𝐥𝐲 𝟏𝟔, 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟏.

Week Ending 6/25/2021

The Friday Wrap Up contains quick "Did You Know" tips that were shared with our social media audience during the week. Would you like to get these in real-time?  See our next article below on how to join us on social media.

#Canvas

• We want to share with you this inspirational video of how #CanvasLMS is empowering learning at our three Education Services for the Deaf and Blind Schools in Wilson, Raleigh, and Morganton.  https://www.instructure.com/.../empowering-students-with...
  
  
• Coming soon to Canvas: Comment Library in SpeedGrader! 
  On June 19th, this new feature was released in #CanvasLMS to allow teachers to save and reuse comments in the SpeedGrader.  Comments will be saved to the individual user and be available in all the courses that have access to SpeedGrader.
  
  
• Learn more about this new feature in the Instructor Release Summary from Canvas: https://community.canvaslms.com/.../User.../ta-p/464327

NCEES

• You can always access NCEES to find Professional Development. NCEES is accessible during End-of-Year Processes!
  
  
• >>>Staff Evaluation Plans and PDPs will be archived on June 30, 2021<<<     
  - Staff can continue working on any courses already started!
  - Staff can continue to find new courses to take to earn credits!
  
  
• Check out this quick video on Finding PD in NCEES:  https://youtu.be/AJC2VXvi8rs
  
  
• The North Carolina Beginning Teacher Summit 2021 was held on June 16 and 17.
  http://bit.ly/NCBTS21
  
  
• The NCBT Summit was a two-day FREE professional development opportunity specifically designed to address the needs of novice teachers. Recorded breakout sessions are found here: https://www.youtube.com/.../UCd84LcC4.../playlists 
  
  
• Attention Beaufort, Brunswick, Carteret, Clinton, Duplin, Jones, Lenior, New Hanover, Onslow, Pamlico, Sampson, Washington, and Wayne Counties - SEA Summit takes place July 28-29, 2021.  Participants will be registered through NCEES.
  
  You may find registration & session information for this virtual conference at http://bit.ly/seasummit21.  There will be over 25 sessions to choose from!!

#NCNCEES, #SEASummit21, @NCHomeBase, @nchbase, @ncdpiDTL, @ncpublicschools

Follow Us on Social Media!

Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and begin receiving "Did You Know" tips featuring each Home Base product. 

These messages will include upcoming changes, tips, and even hidden treasures within each product to make your job easier.  If you are not following us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, click on the links below and begin today!  Make sure you share this information with other staff within your school.

Instagram:  @nchomebase         Facebook:  @nchomebase       Twitter:  @nchomebase

NCDPI Technology Support Center

NCDPI's Technology Support Center continues to meet your support needs for:

• Schoolnet 
• NCEES/Unified Talent 
• Staff & Student UID (eScholar)

Support availability:

Web (NEW URL):  https://ncgov.servicenowservices.com/sp_dpi   -  24/7

Phone:  919-716-1840, Monday - Friday, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. (excluding state holidays)

Technical support for SIS needs is handled directly by PowerSchool support using chat, phone, or by opening a case ticket.