Welcome NCDPI's New Home Base Manager - Matthew Mayo

Matthew Mayo joins us from Wilson County Schools where he served as the Executive Director of Technology & Media.  He has extensive experience overseeing the student information system, media centers, digital teaching and learning, technology infrastructure, security and hardware. 

Mr. Mayo began his career as a middle school math teacher in Edgecombe County where he found his passion for educational technology through the original IMPACT model grants from NCDPI.  Mr. Mayo also served as an instructional technology facilitator for several years coaching teachers and students in the latest technologies.  He has worked in administration since 2012, including roles as a coordinator and director of technology and media programs.  He most recently served as Central Carolina Technology Director of the Year for 2021.  He has also served as chair of Central Carolina RESA Technology Council.  Mr. Mayo attended ECU to earn his bachelor's degree and master's degree in Instructional Technology, school administrators licensure through UNC-W, Chief Technology Officer certification through UNC, along with his CETL certification in 2019. 

Mr. Mayo will be joining us on April 26.  Please help us welcome Mr. Matthew Mayo!

Home Base Maintenance - Modified

Due to last week’s unexpected maintenance, the Home Base maintenance window that is scheduled to begin this Friday, March 11, 2022, will only occur for certain PSUs.  Maintenance will not occur simultaneously.  PSUs affected will be notified directly by PowerSchool as to when their systems will be taken down. 

The time span for each PSU should only take a couple of hours.  To see if your PSU is included in tonight's maintenance, please see the list of affected PSUs.  

Remember to visit our Home Base Maintenance Schedule that is posted on the NCDPI website for future maintenance periods.

NCEES Hosting Moves to AWS this Monday, March 14

PowerSchool Support has planned hosting migration of Professional Learning and Perform Enterprise (NCEES - NC Educator Effectiveness System) from Rackspace to Amazon Web Services. 

On Monday, March 14 from 12:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m. ET, PS is planning to move NCDPI instance of PowerSchool Professional Learning and Perform Enterprise (NCEES Home Base) to Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud infrastructure.

NCDPI will perform necessary preparation updates to DNS Setup on Sunday, Mar. 13, 2022 at 6 a.m. ET. 

>>> Please notify your NCEES System users that during this time, the NCEES site will be completely inaccessible while the migration is occurring.  

There are many benefits to AWS hosting and information has been posted to the PowerSchool Community here.

2022-2023 Instructional School Start and End Dates - Districts Only

G.S. 115C-84.2(a2) specifies that a report on the start and end dates of the instructional calendar for students for the next academic year be provided to the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the State Board of Education by April 1 of each year.  To make this deadline, the start and end dates of the instructional calendar for students for each school must be in PowerSchool before April 1.

A report of the 2022-2023 school start and end dates will be shared with PSUs for verification and to identify the statutory exception authorizing an earlier start date for schools with a start date earlier than August 29, 2022.

It has come to our attention that districts may have or be planning to adopt calendars not compliant with the calendar law. Please be reminded that pursuant to G.S. 115C-84.2(a)(d) the opening date for students shall be no earlier than the Monday closest to August 26, and the closing date for students shall be not later than the Friday closest to June 11. Unless the district has received an approved calendar waiver for the 2022-2023 school year, the start date should be no earlier than August 29, 2022 and the end date should be no later than June 9, 2023.

For further questions, please contact studentaccounting@dpi.nc.gov.

Removal of Reading Retained Flag 

NCDPI has written a script that removed the reading retained flag from every student in grade 5 and above.  PSUs should no longer see a reading retained label on any 5^th grade or above student.  This script was applied to support a request made by NCDPI’s Office of Early Learning on Oct. 1, 2021.  Please see the message below for further background information.

*********Message Sent on Oct. 1, 2021*******

Removal of Reading Retained label for student in 5th grade or above

“A reading retained label should be removed at the end of the 3/4 transition or 3/4 acceleration school year when a decision is made to retain the student in grade 4 or promote to grade 5 if the reading retained label has not already been removed. Any student who has already been promoted to grade 5 or above should no longer have the reading retained label.”

If your PSU continues to show a reading retained flag for 5^th grade or above students, please contact the Home Base Team at home_base@dpi.nc.gov.

Read-to-Achieve Update - 03/11/2022

Please read and share the latest Read-to-Achieve Update. Information pertaining to LETRS® and upcoming webinars is included.

RtA Update - 03/11/22

Reminder:  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.

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.

Statewide Canvas Meeting

Thank you to all those that were able to attend our Statewide Canvas meeting on Monday. For those of you that were unable to do so, please feel free to reference the recording and slide deck using the information below. We hope to see you next month! 

• March call recording link can be found HERE, passcode is: cj.Yv2mv
• March slide deck
• April registration link

Learning.com Webinars

On February 22 and 23, Learning.com in collaboration with DPI held the webinar, “Supporting the North Carolina Digital Learning Standards with Learning.com’s  EasyTech Curriculum”.  To access the webinar slide presentation, navigate to: https://bit.ly/LCOMNCFeb2022.  To view the recording, navigate to: https://bit.ly/LCOMNCTier1Recording22. 

Soon, NC Tier 1 Public School Units (PSUs) will be receiving the NCDPI K-8 Digital Literacy (Learning.com) Interest/Intent Survey to be completed by your district contact. NCDPI will be inquiring as to your PSU’s interest in receiving funding for your K-8 students and access to the Learning.com curriculum for the 2022-2023 school year.  If you have questions regarding the survey or funding, please reach out to Audrey Long, audrey.long@dpi.nc.gov.  

If you have any questions regarding Learning.com or want to schedule a demo, please contact Tiffany Kinney, tkinney@learning.com. We appreciate your support and look forward to helping prepare your students for success in our digital world.   

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.

•  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.

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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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