Tracking Attendance During Distance Learning during COVID-19

[shackbarth]

I would be interested to know how attendance tracking may look if a school district uses Distance Learning?  How would this be set up in Powerschool?  Anyone else looking into this or have ideas/suggestions?

[ElstonS]

Hi @shackbarth, 

The current workaround for attendance tracking for districts using Distance Learning is to take homeroom attendance. For more information regarding how to track attendance for districts using Distance Learning, we recommend connecting with our SIS support team by clicking on this direct link who should be able to work with an SRC expert of your state and assist you with this. 

[shackbarth]

Hi Elton,

I received an email response from User LissetteF with an attached draft SOP document on the 7/28.  The response does not show up in the community forum, I would like to see the attached document, how do I go about contacting LissetteF?

[Reshma]

Hi @shackbarth,

Thank you for your question in PowerSchool Community!

You can grab the other community member's attention by mentioning her on your post.  All you have to do is adding '@' before the username and post your question in Community.  You can also reach out to the user through the Private Message feature.  You can access this feature by clicking on the envelope symbol shown on the top right corner of any Community Page.  The 'New Message' feature will lead you to draft a message.  Remember to enter the username within the field 'Send to'.  Note that, users who have disabled private messages will be removed from the send list and not receive a message. 

[jfinchUpperDarbySD]

Hello .. I was wondering if anyone downloaded the SOP that the user posted with this comment below .. 

I've proposed adding synchronous and asynchronous attendance codes. For the K-5 students, this data would only be entered during homeroom and for 6-12 grades participation would be tracked for all core subjects.  Participation can be anything from a completed assignment for the day, participating in google meets, and a phone call with parent or student.  The codes we are thinking of using are

1. •       Internet or telephone calls – Synchronous (SYN) Present Code
   •       Participation in web-based learning – Synchronous (SYN) Present Code
   •       Weekly assignment packet + phone call – Asynchronous (ASY) Present Code

I'm attaching a draft of our SOP.  I hope this helps. 

[kbaker1978]

@jfinchUpperDarbySDHow can we get the SOP you attached?

[shackbarth]

I am hoping @LissetteF will respond and attach the SOP that was mentioned.

Thank you,

[LissetteF]

Hi @shackbarth,

Apologies for the late response, I'm attaching our attendance procedure that has been vetted by our internal auditors.  Our district has not moved to PowerTeacher Pro so our leaders got creative with creating a google tracker that would track attendance and engagement on a weekly basis.  Our registrars are currently entering attendance in PS using the tracker as the main data source.  I recognize it's probably late in the game but I hope this helps. 

Thansk, 

LF

[shackbarth]

Thank you so much!

[BeckiR1]

We did something similar. We are a preschool-8 school, so we use Daily Attendance. I set up a code "V" which stands for Engaged (Virtually.) Teachers use that code for students who are active in the meetings and work on Google Classroom.

[LindseyS8]

I am interested in this as well, but more from the side of switching from remote to a hybrid in person model.  Our district will be starting fully remote and plan to take attendance in our "morning meetings" at least in elementary.  What happens when we go hybrid and have to split each class into 2 groups?  They will physically be in the building on alternating days but we still need to "track" attendance for them when they are home but working.  Do we start the year with the classes already split?  Or can teachers go back somehow and edit attendance at the end of the day after the afternoon remote sessions?  Just looking for ideas.

[Reshma]

Hi @LindseyS8,

Thank you for your question in PowerSchool Community!

To assist you further with all the queries you are having, we recommend reaching out to the PowerSchool SIS Support team through the Contact Support portal within Community.  You should be able to connect with a live chat agent to get immediate assistance.

[BeckiR1]

We take attendance in the morning. If a teacher has a meeting with virtual students and a student doesn't attend, we ask the teacher to make a note and send that info to the main office. The attendance secretary overrides that day's attendance to reflect the change. We are a very small school (<500 students) so it's feasible for the attendance secretary to do that and take one thing off the teachers' plates. But the teachers certainly could do the override at the end of the day.