Call for Proposals

COORDINATORS, WE STILL NEED YOU!

Thanks to those who have responded to the call but we still need more.  Don't know what to share?  How about sharing those tips and tricks you use routinely to make your work life easier, or those complicated tasks you've mastered to a T?  We want to make this a great learning experience for all, and with your valuable knowledge and expertise, we will be able to do just that!

Proposals are being accepted now through September 20.  Please submit all proposals to bit.ly/sisproposals.  If there are sessions you would like to see presented at the conference, please email the Home Base Team at home_base@dpi.nc.gov.

Tonight's Home Base Maintenance 

The next Home Base maintenance window is scheduled to begin tonight, September 16, 2022.  Currently, PowerSchool and NCEdCloud are the only applications scheduled for maintenance.  All other Home Base applications will remain available.

The PowerSchool application will be brought down for one night only, Friday, September 16 at 7 p.m. and returned to service by 7 a.m., Saturday morning, September 17.  The application will be made accessible to all users once maintenance is complete.  Please share this message with other staff as appropriate.

NCEdCloud will be taken offline tonight at 5 p.m. for a minor maintenance event. We anticipate the system will become available again no later than Saturday morning. NCDPI will notify NCEdCloud LEA Administrators as soon as NCEdCloud has returned to service.

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.

Read to Achieve Update

Please read and share with the appropriate staff the latest Read-to-Achieve update.

Read-to-Achieve Update - 09/16/2022

2022-2023 PMR Update 

PMR Certification Statement 

This is a new addition to the PMR approval process in PowerSchool. Before approval, PMRs are to be reviewed and signed by the school principal. The new certification will serve as acknowledgement and certification by the school principal or the principal’s designee and will appear for each monthly PMR collection. The update will be implemented into production during this week’s maintenance weekend.  

Users will need to re-run, certify, and approve previously approved PMRs. An unlock/unapprove request will be submitted by Student Accounting to PowerSchool Support for all PSUs. NCDPI will notify users once the PMRs are unlocked. 

Click on the following link to read more about the new addition to the PMR approval process in PowerSchool. 

Certification Statement Steps for Approval.pdf

Please contact Student Accounting at studentaccounting@dpi.nc.gov for questions.

Advanced Math Course (AMC) Legislation Reporting Update

NC’s Advanced Math Course legislation, Session Law 2019-120/Senate Bill 500, requires that any student who has demonstrated the highest level of mastery in the previous school year accesses advanced mathematics instruction the following year. The legislation requires NCDPI to annually collect the number and demographic information for all students who are eligible for advanced math courses AND whether or not they are currently placed, meaning this school year, in advanced math courses.  

The reporting window for this year is October 1st - October 15th. To support you in this process a video has been created to share the purpose and timeline of the advanced math course report, along with step by step instructions for running, validating, and submitting the report and any data corrections.  

For the video resource, additional guidance and resources, please visit the Advanced Mathematics Course (AMC) Enrollment Legislation | NC DPI website. 

The NCDPI team will also host Office Hours to provide technical assistance with the report in the coming weeks: 

Friday, September 23 (10:00 - 11:00) 

Click here to join the meeting 

Meeting ID: 267 177 348 045 

Passcode: jgBdhF 

Or call in (audio only) 

+1 323-484-5095,,283910256#   United States, Los Angeles 

Phone Conference ID: 283 910 256# 

Friday, September 30 (10:00 - 11:00)

Click here to join the meeting

Meeting ID: 271 855 442 85

Passcode: qe55br

Or call in (audio only)

+1 323-484-5095,,21357332#   United States, Los Angeles

Phone Conference ID: 213 573 32#

Reminder:  CRDC Contacts in EDDIE Due October 1

The Office of Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) will be conducted in the 2022-2023 school year.  Data for the collection is from the previous year (School Year 2021-2022).   

To date, the Federal government has not published an official start date.  The NCDPI will notify PSUs once an announcement has been made. 

NCDPI would like to make sure that we have the most accurate contact information for your PSU’s Civil Rights data coordinator.  Please update EDDIE with two CRDC Coordinator contacts by October 1, 2022.  PSUs are also strongly advised to verify or update the Student Information Coordinator contact as well. 

Instructions for creating Staff Entries (Roles) in EDDIE are in the Help Using EDDIE section of the NCDPI website. 

Note:  PSUs which were not open in the school year 2021-2022 are not required to participate in this collection. 

Please contact Terra Dominguez at terra.dominguez@dpi.nc.gov with any questions you may have.

Reminder:  PEBT Attendance Code Reminder

P-EBT will continue into the fall of the 2022-2023  school year.  As of now, it is uncertain how long these benefits will continue to be provided; however, until further notice, the benefits will be provided only to students enrolled in schools that are approved to participate in the National School Lunch Program.

P-EBT eligible students are those students that qualify for free or reduced-price meal benefits or attend a CEP school. Students will be reimbursed based on the individual attendance records with the attendance codes of 1D Quarantine and 1R Present Off-site.

Reminder:  Common Follow-up Report

The current version of the Common Follow Up report contains programming errors.  DPI has been working with PowerSchool to fix the errors.  A new version of the report will be installed to production during the September maintenance weekend, September 16th, that will fix many of the errors.  There are a few issues that will still need to be addressed at a later time.  Below are the list of known issues:

1. Graduates that were previously retained are showing the retention exit code instead of the W6 exit code.
2. In some cases students do not appear in the Enrollment report at the District level.  These students do show at the School level.
3. In some cases Credit Recovery courses are not showing on the Courses report.

Please do not run or approve the Common Follow Up report until after the new code has been applied to production.  We are going to ask PowerSchool to do an auto run of the report after the maintenance weekend.

Reminder:  Summer Withdrawals

As a reminder to all PSUs, please continue to withdraw No-Show students as summer No-Shows, using your summer withdrawal dates.  Remember to change the start date to your summer date in July, then transfer out of school using that same July date.

Withdrawing a student on their current start date, although it is still technically a No-Show withdrawal, runs the risk of having overlaps with a current enrollment in another district who may have already started.  These overlaps will cause issues in downstream systems, e.g., ECATS, where the student only gets uploaded to the school with the most recent start date, regardless of status.  

A No-Show for the beginning of the school year should always use the summer No-Show dates, and always remember to change the entry date, so it's the same as the withdrawal, and clear the Scheduling Setup screen, so the next PSU will have no issues in Transferring Student Records

Attendance Reminders

The NCDPI Home Base Team is looking forward to a brand new year, and with that, please remember that taking accurate daily attendance for students is essential.  Attendance guidelines can be found in the NC SASA Manual. 

As policies change and new codes are added to meet those changes, it is imperative to review attendance data on a regular basis to ensure proper attendance coding.  Financial Service and Business states that 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 more information, questions or concerns, please contact Student Accounting at studentaccounting@dpi.nc.gov.

Homebound/Hospital Attendance Code

A new H/H Attendance Code is now live in PowerSchool as of July 1, 2022. The attached technical assistance guide is intended to illustrate appropriate use cases for this code, provide responses to the FAQs submitted since announcing the upcoming release of the code, and an explanation of the documentation necessary to support a homebound/hospital placement through medical necessity or IEP Team decisions. Please be aware that this information is also being shared concurrently with other appropriate district personnel.

For detailed information, please visit the Homebount/Hospital Attendance Code Technical Assistance Guide. 

Reading Camp Attendance

Please see and share the instructions below on how to take attendance during Reading Camp.

In PowerSchool:

Start Page > Student Selection > Special Programs

NC-Summer School - RTA

1. Enter in the beginning date of Reading Camp and enter in the ending date of Reading Camp.  2. Enter in the total number of days students attended in the days present field. 
   
   

Here is the QRD for enrolling students into a Special Program.  Please work with your PS Data Manager/Coordinator in your PSU for assistance or complete a work ticket with PowerSchool.

September Canvas Call

Thank you to all who were able to join us for our September Canvas statewide call on Monday. If you were unable to join us, or if you would like to reference any aspect of our discussion, you can access the recording HERE. The passcode is: Qf8?CpE*

If you'd like to register for our October call, you can do so using THIS registration link.

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:

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

Access for PSU PowerSchool SIS Admins

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

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

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