Schedule changes not saving

[mboduszek]

Scheduling (things not 'sticking')  

This is our third year with PowerSchool. 

Issue #1

For the last two years, the work the counselors have completed during a specific window of time with scheduling has reverted back to the original load over the summer. This includes:

• fixing students' schedules prior to the end of the school year
• balancing classes across all curricular areas
• schedules created for our parochial and move in students
• balancing students' schedules

We are told this can only happen for one of two reasons, but we aren't convinced. Here are the two they indicated:

• The school did another load after the original commit date
• The counselors were incorrectly working in PowerScheduler instead of on the 'live' side

We placed a call to an administrator at another high school who is familiar with this process to see what he thought. He said there could be a few more reasons. 

• An administrator does another load and forgets to tell the counselors
• The high school and middle school are tied together in a way that when the middle school does their scheduling or when they commit their schedules, it undoes our work at the high school 

We believe there may be more to learn about how the middle school does their scheduling and what we are being told regarding incoming 9th grade schedules. 

Issue #2

Scheduling (not being able to work on incoming 9th grade schedules during the current school year)

We have been told we cannot work on a middle school schedule until the middle school 'commits' their schedule or until we 'rollover' to the new school year. This happens later in the year, typically mid June, because the middle school waits for EOC data to make scheduling decisions. 

Our administrator friend in another district said that the high school absolutely does not have to wait for the middle school to commit their schedules or for the summer rollover for high school counselors to be able to work on them for the incoming 9th graders. He said that as long as...

"As long as the middle school sets up their 'constraints' to 'point' the current 8th grade to 9th grade and also 'point' the current 8th grade to the high school, all should be fine." He wonders if someone unknowingly is doing this incorrectly. 

Any help or insight is greatly appreciated.  -Monica

[JeffG9]

@mboduszek 

"The school did another load after the original commit date

The counselors were incorrectly working in PowerScheduler instead of on the 'live' side"

-Once the schedule is Committed from PowerScheduler, it becomes "Live." Any changes in PowerScheduler, such as a new Load or hand-scheduling, will have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the Live Side schedules.

"An administrator does another load and forgets to tell the counselors

The high school and middle school are tied together in a way that when the middle school does their scheduling or when they commit their schedules, it undoes our work at the high school "

-See above. Loads in PowerScheduler have no bearing whatsoever on the Live Side schedules.

-If the MS/HS Buildings are separate in PS, the schedules are completely separate.

"We have been told we cannot work on a middle school schedule until the middle school 'commits' their schedule or until we 'rollover' to the new school year."

-I am not sure what this means. If you meant to say that the HS cannot schedule until the MS has committed their schedule, this is absolutely incorrect. I work with over 70 districts, and as I said, as long as the buildings are separate in PS the schedules are completely independent of each other.

"Feeder Schools" (the MS "feeds" the HS; Elementary Schools "feed" the MS) need to have their highest grade level kids' Next School Indicator set to the school they will be promoted to during the EOY Process. For example, if your MS is grades 6-8 and the HS is 9-12, someone needs to set the 8th graders "Next School Indicator" at the MS to the HS. This will allow your HS schedulers to see the students in PowerScheduler.

One thing to re-iterate in reference to PowerScheduler: do not bother hand-scheduling students until you are completely done running Loads. Running/Importing a Load will undo all manual scheduling that has been done.