Next Home Base Maintenance Window- May 20-23, 2022

The next Home Base maintenance window is scheduled to begin May 20, 2022.  Currently, PowerSchool is the only known application that will undergo maintenance.  All other Home Base applications will remain available.

The PowerSchool application will be brought down for one night only, Friday, May 20 at 7 p.m. and returned to service by 7 a.m., Saturday morning, May 21.  The application will be made accessible to all users once maintenance is complete.  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 emergency maintenance is required in addition to these scheduled dates, all users will be notified in advance.

OCR/CRDC - Action Required - Section 504 Designation in PowerSchool by June 29

The Office of Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) is a mandatory federal report covering a wide variety of previous year data, including counts based on students with a Section 504 designation.

The CRDC SY2021-22 collection will begin in SY2022-23.  It is important to record the Section 504 designation in PowerSchool before EOY. 

How a Section 504 designation is documented and monitored is a local level decision, however; in order for the PowerSchool CRDC Preview report to calculate Section 504 survey questions, there must be Special Program record '504' associated to the student.  There is a quick reference document located at https://www.dpi.nc.gov/documents/student_info/ps-qrd-recording-section-504-in-powerschool-20141009.

If no data exist in PowerSchool regarding Section 504 status for students, PSUs will be required to update CRDC survey questions after NCDPI uploads data on behalf of the state. PSUs who wish to avoid the burdensome manual updates to the CRDC should ensure that all 504 students have been identified in PowerSchool no later than June 29.

Implementing a Weekly Auto-run Process of the State Discipline Report in PowerSchool

Per SBE policy (SSCH-000), incidents of certain behaviors and disciplinary actions must be submitted to the state within 5 business days of occurrence (see pages 4 - 6 in the North Carolina Discipline Data Reporting Procedures Manual). To meet this requirement, the data must reside in the state database where it can be viewed in state reports.  Currently, for this to occur, the State Discipline Report must be run manually in PowerSchool at the school level.  Over the last few months, we have been working with PowerSchool to create an auto-run process which will automatically run the report every week. 

It should be noted that while the report will be auto-run weekly:

• Schools and PSUs will still be able to manually run the report.
• Schools will need to manually verify if the State Discipline Report ran successfully.
• Schools will need check for any data exceptions or errors thrown when the State Discipline Report ran.
• Schools and PSUs will still need to manually approve the State Discipline Report in PowerSchool during the collection window that runs June 1 through EOY of each year.
• Discipline data may be deleted, updated, changed, and modified throughout the school year by schools and PSUs and is not considered final until EOY of each year when the report is approved in PowerSchool by schools and PSUs.

Our goal is to implement the auto-run process beginning July 1, 2022.  The proposed day and time for the auto-run process is 3:00 a.m. Saturdays starting July 1 and running through EOY each year. 

Please provide feedback on the proposed time and day using this survey link.  The survey will close on May 27 at 6:00 p.m. 

Reminder:  Custom Screens in PowerSchool

During a recent TIMS webinar, the option to create custom screens for summer school was discussed amongst PSUs.  Please be aware that the Home Base Team does not advocate or support the creation of custom screens. Custom screens can be created and used locally; however, custom screen support is not provided by PowerSchool or NCDPI.

Reminder:  Home Base Opt-in Tool Offline

The Home Base Opt-in Tool has been taken offline for  preparation for the 2022-2023 Home Base Opt-in Process.  The opt-in tool will not be returned to service until the start of the opt-in process which is currently scheduled for May 16, 2022. 

Please visit the NCDPI Home Base Opt-in Website for detailed information concerning the Home Base Opt-in Process.  Questions may be directed to home_base@dpi.nc.gov or yolanda_wilson@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

Access to NCDPI Canvas for Home Base Resource Hubs

Any PSU PowerSchool SIS admin who does not have access to the NCDPI “Blue” Canvas located in the NCEdCloud portal and would like to have access or grant access to data managers within their PSU, please complete the form below.  In this form, you can enter up to 5 accounts manually or upload a CSV/Excel file if you have more than 5 account requests.

 If you have any questions, please get in touch with Corey McNeill.  

Link to Form

May Statewide Call

If you were unable to make the statewide call on Monday, you can view the slide deck and recording provided below. Our next call will be Monday Jun 6, 2022, at 2 PM EST. Click on the registration link to register for the June call.
 

Slide deck HERE,

Recording HERE.
The passcode is: =X#Z+Pv5

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.

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