Tonight's Home Base Maintenance Window

Tonight’s Home Base maintenance window is set to begin at 7 p.m.  The PowerSchool, NCEES, Schoolnet and NCEdCloud applications are all scheduled for a brief maintenance.

The PowerSchool application will be brought down for one night only, Friday, February 18 at 7 p.m. and returned to service by 12:00 p.m., Saturday, February 19.  The application will be made accessible to all users once maintenance is complete. 

This maintenance window will include a small SRC update. Here is a copy of the SRC release notes. In addition, due to the influx of PowerSchool SIS outages we have experienced since our last Oracle upgrade, PowerSchool will perform an Oracle restart during this maintenance window. This restart is expected to improve system performance and decrease the number of outages. We estimate that maintenance will be completed by noon on Saturday, February 19. If this changes, PSUs will be contacted.

Security patching will be performed on the Schoolnet application starting at 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 18. Schoolnet may experience a brief 30 minute outage.

NCEdCloud will undergo miscellaneous security updates beginning at 8 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 18; however, no downtime is expected.  

Sunday, February 20 at 10:00 p.m. to Monday, February 21 at 6:00 a.m. EST, the NCEES vendor (PowerSchool) will be deploying version 22.2.0.0 into the NCEES system. During this time, NCEES’s availability will be limited. 

Please share this message with other staff as appropriate.

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 2022-2023 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 an emergency maintenance is required in addition to these scheduled dates, all users will be notified in advance.

OCR/CRDC - A Message from Federal Partner Support

Dear Coordinators,

Please share with other staff as appropriate.  Read this message carefully.

Note:  PSUs which were not open in the school year 2020-2021 are not required to participate in this collection.

Below is a message from Partner Support:

_____________________________________________________________________________ 

Please forward this email to those in your district who are responsible for submitting data.

The Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) submission system will undergo required system maintenance on Friday, February 18, 2022, from 9:00 PM – Midnight ET. During this time, the submission system will be unavailable.

We apologize for any inconvenience. 

Please let us know if you are unable to access the submission system after 12 a.m. ET Saturday morning, February 19, 2022.

Thank you,

CRDC Partner Support Center 

Telephone: 855-255-6901
E-mail: crdc@aemcorp.com
PSC Contact Form: 
https://crdc.communities.ed.gov/#program/contact-psc
CRDC Resource Center: https://crdc.communities.ed.gov

Request for Course/Section Attributes

The following message was sent in last week’s SIS bulletin. As a followup, while today was the deadline to have changes made to course and section attributes, we’d like to remind PSUs to continue maintaining this data throughout the year. 

*NOTE- The Institution Code must be populated for all Community College, Technical College, and University courses.

______

While the SAR collection was previously removed from PowerSchool, it is still necessary for PSUs to continue maintaining course and section attributes. For purposes related to funding and state and federal reporting, this data is reviewed by different divisions of NCDPI throughout the year. 

PSUs are asked to review their course and section attributes and make any necessary updates by Friday, February 18. This includes making updates to the Extended Data section.

Required Attributes

The following course and section attributes must be populated:

• Institution Code

• External Provider

• Third Party Provider

• Delivery Mode

• Course Length

• How Taken

All codes listed under "Required Attributes" in the document need to be populated by Friday.

The Home Base team has created a Course and Section Attributes QRD that walks through how to add/update these attributes individually and in mass. Please contact the PowerSchool Support team with any questions or support requests.

PSUs Can Now Add New Grades in PowerSchool SIS

The EDDIE process has been modified to allow PSUs to begin adding new grade levels without the EDDIE feed being disabled. The new process temporarily pauses the feed to only the grade level fields located on the Schools/School Setup page. 

PSUs who need to add new grade levels for the 2022-23 school year may now do so in PowerSchool. Prior to adding these grade levels to PowerSchool, your EDDIE administrator must first ensure that the EDDIE “Approved” grade levels include the grades being added to the SIS. It is important that you remember to add these new grade levels to EDDIE “Current” grade levels after EOY. EDDIE “Current” grade level changes should not take place until then.

For assistance, please visit the PowerSchool SIS Administrator - School Information.

NCDPI Technology Services is Hiring

The NCDPI Technology Service Division is seeking to fill the following position. If you are interested or know of someone that may be interested, please share this posting. The application must be submitted by 5 p.m., March 1, 2022. 

IT Business Systems Analyst 1  

Read-to-Achieve Update - 02/18/2022

Please read and share the latest Read-to-Achieve Update dated 02/18/2022.

Read-to-Achieve Update - 02/18/2022 

Reminder:  Homebound/Hospital Code for 2022-2023

The Exceptional Children Division and Home Base team have partnered to create a Homebound/Hospital attendance code (1S) for use in PowerSchool for the 2022-2023 School Year and going forward. This code is to be used for  “Homebound/Hospital” or “Homebound Instruction” which are terms used interchangeably to describe educational services that are provided outside of school. Educational services that are provided outside of school must be documented in a written homebound plan, a Section 504 Plan, or Individualized Education Program (IEP). 

In preparation for the roll-out of this attendance code, the following activities and timelines are proposed:

• February 2022 - Courtesy Alert to PSUs
• Spring 2022 - Technical Assistance Webinars/Resources/Implementation Guide 
• July 2022 - Homebound/Hospital Attendance Code live in PowerSchool
• Fall 2022 - Update included in Student Attendance and Student Accounting Manual

Technical assistance will include examples of how to appropriately document the specifics of the educational services to be provided based on whether the student is disabled (IEP/504 Plan) or nondisabled. Differences between this code (1S) and existing codes with examples of appropriate use cases will be provided.

Please continue to watch for updates on this topic through your regular communication loops. If there are questions or concerns, please submit them using this link: https://bit.ly/HBAttCode2022.  Questions and concerns will be accepted through the link provided during the month of February. Staff will then use the submissions to develop the technical assistance materials and FAQs that will be provided later in the Spring of 2022.

Reminder:  Calendar Changes Due to Inclement Weather

Many of our NC Public Schools were compelled to close due to recent inclement weather events. As a courtesy reminder to our PSU partners that may need to make up school days, please review and forward to the appropriate staff this PS QRD: School Calendar Change Document. It includes instructions on how to adjust your school calendar during the school year to account for missed school days in the term or to adjust semester start dates and end dates. 

If semester start and end dates must be changed, this process may involve updates made by the PSU and PowerSchool. Therefore, once your updates are complete, you may need to submit a ticket to PowerSchool Support to complete the calendar update process. Please review the steps in the document for details.

When updating your school calendars, make sure that the in-session flags, bell schedules, and calendar day types are reflective of what occurred that day. If an In-Session day was changed to a Remote Instruction Day, make sure that it is listed in your calendar type setup. Make sure the calendar day type is not blank.

Reminder:  Major Events Status Alerts Subscription

If you have not already subscribed to PowerSchool’s Major Events Status Alerts notification system and you would like to receive notifications for major SIS-related events that take place in the state of North Carolina, please complete this subscription form. Notifications will be received for all PSUs in the state and cannot be limited to a single PSU. Notification types will include outages, wide-spread performance issues, downtime for maintenance, and high impact application issues that affect all instances.

Reminder:  School Start-Time and End-Time Spring Collection 

The School Start-Time and End-Time Spring Collection period began on Feb. 1 and is set to end on March 1, 2022.  Please remember to review the school start-times and end-times in PowerSchool and make adjustments, if needed, prior to running the report. 

For assistance with this collection, please link to the quick reference document, School Start-Times and End-Times.

Reminder: PowerSchool Years and Terms at the LEA Office

At the LEA Office level in PowerSchool, the Years and Terms start and end dates MUST encompass the start date of the PSU’s earliest starting school and the end date of the PSU’s latest ending school. This also includes all Program Schools. The start date for Years and Terms at the LEA level should be 7/1 and the end date should be 6/30.

This information has been updated in the PS User Guide: End-of-Year Processing and can be found under Creating Years and Terms in the user guide.

Reminder:  Attendance During Exam Week(s)

To be considered in attendance, a student (except for hospital/homebound or staggered kindergarten) must be present in the school for the school day or at a place other than the school with the approval of the appropriate school official for the purpose of attending an authorized school activity. Such activities may include field trips, athletic contests, student conventions, musical festivals, or any similar approved activity.

Except as noted above, a student must be present at least one-half of the school's instructional day in order to be recorded present for that day.

NC General Statute 115C-378 states in part that no person shall encourage, entice, or counsel any child of compulsory school age to be unlawfully absent from school.

If a student is exempted from an exam and is not present in the school for the school day or not at a place other than the school with the approval of the appropriate school official for the purpose of attending an authorized school activity, the student is absent.

For questions or concerns, contact Student Accounting at studentaccounting@dpi.nc.gov.

Learning.com Awareness Webinars

On February 22^nd and February 23^rd  NCDPI in partnership with Learning.com will be hosting an informative 30 minute webinar. 

This webinar will review how North Carolina’s adopted K-8 Digital Literacy provider, Learning.com, can improve digital literacy skills for North Carolina students. This webinar is intended for all Tier 1 PSUs, including PSUs that are currently utilizing Learning.com and those interested in contracting with Learning.com for the 2022-23 school year.  During this short presentation, we will discuss and showcase EasyTech’s curriculum online safety & digital citizenship, information literacy, keyboarding, computational thinking, coding, and how we can help prepare students for a digital world. 

Come join us to experience how our lessons align with ISTE and the North Carolina Digital Learning Standards.

Please use the links below to register for the meetings.  Both webinars will have the same content.

​February 22, 2022 at 2 p.m. :  LCOM Awareness Webinar February 22

February 23, 2022 at 10 a.m. :  LCOM Awareness Webinar February 23

Schoolnet at NCTIES

Join us for Collaboration in Schoolnet at NCTIES on March 4, 2022, at 10:30 AM!
Attendees will gain an understanding of the collaborative features available in Schoolnet and have an opportunity to share how they might use these features in their schools or PSUs.

Register today!

Canvas for Elementary at NCTIES

Join us at NCTIES as we explore Canvas for Elementary! Thursday March 3, 2022, from 1:15 - 2:45 p.m. The Canvas for Elementary feature creates a digital classroom that reflects the physical classroom experience for elementary students. This change allows teachers to set up a homeroom course and a course for each subject to organize and focus student course participation. In this session, teachers will have the opportunity to explore the new Canvas for Elementary dashboard and learn about settings and resources to make their courses more K-5 friendly.

Register today!

Canvas Teacher Webinar

Our next Canvas Teacher Webinar will be held on Thursday, March 10, 2022 from 7-8 p.m. The topic of discussion will be about ways to assess within Canvas. Those who attend will receive 0.1 DLC CEU.

Please use this link to register for the webinar. If you have any questions, contact Corey McNeill

Transcend Webinar Recording

In case you missed the informational webinars for Transcend, the recording is now available on the NCDPI YouTube Channel.

Transcend is a computer-adaptive interim assessment add-on for Schoolnet that will be available as part of the Home Base opt-in process for the 2022-2023 school year. Transcend provides tests for grades 3-8 ELA and Math and will be priced at $4 per 3rd-8th grade ADM. 

If you have any questions about Transcend or would like to learn more prior to the Home Base opt-in period, please contact john.mairs@dpi.nc.gov or jeffrey.hauger@pearson.com.

NCEES Winter/Spring Webinars

Please click on the titles below to register for the upcoming NCEES Webinars which are held most Tuesdays from 4-5 p.m.  A certificate to turn into your PSU for approval of .1 -.15 CEUs will be provided to participants that complete the feedback survey at the end of each live session.

• 2/22/2022     
• Export a Plan to PDF reports for District Administrators in NCEES (1.5 hr)
•  Target Audience: Staff with NCEES District Administrator Admin type.
• 3/4/2022  NCTIES    
• Presentation: Growth, Goals & Credits in NCEES
• NCTies Registration    
• Target Audience: Staff in NCEES
•  3/8/2022        
• End of Year Principal Evaluation Processes (1 hr)
• Target Audience: Superintendents/Directors (evaluators of Principals) Principals, APs, Evaluators
•  3/15/2022     
• End of Year Teacher/Support Staff Evaluation & PDP processes (1 hr)
• Target Audience: Teachers and Support Staff. Evaluators and Observers of Teachers/Support Staff.

Black History Moment

In honor of Black History month, NCDPI will share facts about North Carolina's African American history.

Charlotte Hawkins was born in Henderson, North Carolina in 1883, a northern-educated granddaughter of former slaves. She returned to her home state as a teacher in 1901, and established the Alice Freeman Palmer Memorial Institute at Sedalia, near Greensboro. The African American school evolved from an agricultural and manual training facility to a fully accredited, nationally recognized preparatory school.

The Palmer Memorial Institute transformed the lives of more than 2,000 African American students. Today, the campus provides a setting where visitors can explore this unique environment where students lived and learned during the greater part of the 20th century. The museum links Dr. Brown and Palmer Memorial Institute to the larger themes of African American history, women's history, social history, and education, emphasizing the contributions African Americans made in North Carolina.

Learn more about Charlotte Hawkins and the Palmer Memorial Institute here.

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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.

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