Home Base Opt-in Message

Attn. Home Base Leads,

The following message has been sent to district finance officers and charter directors/principals.  

2022-2023 Home Base Opt-in Process is Scheduled to Begin in May

The NC DTL Home Base Team is preparing to open the 2022-23 Home Base Opt-in Process during the month of May. District finance officers and charter school directors will receive further information as to when the system will be taken offline and returned to service for the opt-in process to begin.  Please ensure all finance officer and charter director/principal information in EDDIE is up to date.  This information is used to identify who is eligible to opt in for the districts and charter schools.

This year, PSUs will have an additional product called Transcend made available to them for opting into.  Transcend can only be selected as an option if the PSU opts into Home Base.  The regular fee for opting into Home Base will remain $1 per allotted ADM.  If a PSU elects to opt into Transcend, there will be an additional $4 per allotted ADM for grades 3 - 8 added to the fee.  Finance officers and charter directors/principals may want to speak with their PSU’s Schoolnet leads prior to making the Home Base Opt-in selections to verify if Transcend is an additional product they would like to include.

An introduction and overview of Transcend may be viewed at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-mwWc2_rys. 

If you have questions concerning the Home Base Opt-in process, please contact Yolanda Wilson, yolanda.wilson@dpi.nc.gov.

New NCDPI Course Code Manual

The NCDPI Course Code Committee, which comprises staff from across the agency, has developed a new comprehensive resource for the field, the NCDPI Course Code Manual. This manual, loaded with detailed course information, combines the Course Code Guidance document with many of the other available resources regarding course codes. 

The NCDPI Course Code Manual includes guidance on the following topics:

• Course Code Related Policies
• Course Code Digits 
• Accountability 
• Advanced Placement (AP)
• Arts Education Course Manual
• Cambridge Assessment International Education (CIE) 
• Career and College Promise (CCP) Course Code Guidance
• Career and College Ready Graduate (CCRG)
• Career and Technical Education (CTE) Course Coding
• Course Code Master List 
• Generic Course Code Scheduling
• International Baccalaureate (IB)
• Local Course Titles and Identifying Exceptional Children
• Math Options Charts 
• Occupational Course of Study (OCS) Guidelines & Resources
• SBE Policies for Course Coding

The NCDPI Course Code Manual has been published to the NCDPI website for your convenience at https://www.dpi.nc.gov/documents/homebase/course-code-manual.  If you have questions or comments regarding any information in the NCDPI Course Code Manual, please contact the Home Base Team at home_base@dpi.nc.gov.

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.

Read-to-Achieve Update - 03/25/2022

Please read and share the latest Read-to-Achieve Update. 

RtA Update - 03/25/22

Learning.com Keyboarding Contest

Want to help your students earn special recognition for practicing essential keyboarding skills while having fun? Learning.com will be having a Keyboard contest that is open to students in grades 3-8 beginning April 4, 2022, through May 2, 2022. 

Keyboarding skills are essential in all learning environments, prepping for online assessments, and investing in future careers. This contest will be a fun way to promote ongoing keyboarding practice with your students to develop fluency and accuracy. 

Tips for the contest: 

• Encourage students to practice their keyboarding skills at least 2-3 times per week for 15-20 minutes per session. 

Recommended practices: 

• Bell ringer activity
• Early completer activity
• Independent practice during center time and at home 

Please share your district’s participation on Twitter and mention @learningdotcom! If you have any questions reach out to Tiffany Kinney at tkinney@learning.com.  Have fun! 

Learning.com Keyboarding Contest Flyer 

Reminder: K-8 Digital Literacy Survey of Intent

The North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) is entering its fourth year with Learning.com as the K-8 Digital Literacy Initiative statewide curriculum and assessment solution. This partnership is designed to encourage student growth in computational thinking, digital citizenship and online safety, visual mapping, databases and computer fundamentals.

The K-8 Digital Literacy Survey of Intent for 2022-2023 was emailed on March 10 to all Tier 1 Districts (PSUs and Charter Schools).  Please ensure that the survey is completed and submitted by March 31, 2022.

Home Base is Hiring!

The NCDPI Home Base Team is seeking to fill the following position.  If you are interested, please apply by the deadline.  If you know of someone that may be interested, please share this posting. 

Click on the title for a full description.

Job Title and Description: 

Staff Development Specialist II - Trainer for Home Base applications and product manager for the Instructional Improvement System (IIS) (Schoolnet).

Closing:
4/1/2022 5:00 PM EST

NCEES Hosting Migration Mar. 27-28 Downtime

NOTICE: NCEES will be down for HOSTING Migration Sunday-Monday, Mar. 27-28, 2022.

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

On Sunday, March 27 from 10 PM to 4 AM EST on Monday March 28, PowerSchool is scheduled to move the NCDPI instance of PowerSchool Professional Learning and Perform Enterprise, NCEES Home Base, to Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud infrastructure.  During this time, the NCEES site (including Professional Development and Evaluation components) will be completely inaccessible while the migration is occurring.  No other Home Base application will be affected by this migration.

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

Reminder:  Early Check Out Attendance Code 

Early Check Out (1P) is used to track students who are present for the day and then checked out early by a parent or guardian. Time should be entered for the duration the student was present for the day.

Example: Time in: 8:15 a.m. Time Out: 2:30 p.m.

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

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.

New Home Base Admin Course 

Feedback from PSUs identified a need for resource hubs for the Home Base products. The product managers have created Admin Resource Courses for each area. These resource courses are located in the NCDPI Canvas instance.

Please visit these courses.  Below are the steps to enroll in these courses:

How to access these resources:

• Sign in to the Blue Canvas icon within NCEdCloud
• Using the Global Navigation (on the left), click the Home Base Resources button
• On the menu that opens, select the course(s) you would like to enroll into
• After enrolling, the course will appear on your Canvas Dashboard

Other Information:

• Feel free to provide feedback on these courses. They all contain a feedback button on their homepage.
• We will continue to update these courses as more product information becomes available

Canvas Teacher Webinar

Our next Canvas Teacher Webinar will be held on Thursday, April 7, 2022, from 7-8 p.m. The topic of discussion will be, "Using Mastery Paths for Differentiation in 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.

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