Extended Care Overview

Overview

The Extended Care module is designed to help schools manage after school care for students and program students. It has the ability to track attendance and billing based on days and time in and out for both scheduled and drop-in students. In some ways, the Extended Care module is similar to the Other Programs module in that both allow schools to track non-academic classes with non-student enrollees, but Extended Care is used to track more flexible schedules and as-needed attendance.

Process

The daily process for an administrator managing Extended Care involves two main tasks: creating new registrations and taking attendance.

Creating New Registrations

Registration can be done one of two ways: in Axiom or online. Online registration follows the same process as online registration for Other Programs. Learn more about online registration.

To create registrations in Axiom, use the Add a Registration link on the Extended Care homepage. If a student will be attending the Extended Care class every day Monday through Friday, only a single registration record is needed. Set the “Day of Week” field to the M-F value. However, if the student will only be attending the class for a few days out of the week, a record will need to be created for each day that the student will be present. For example, if a family registers a child for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, a registration record will need to be created for that child for each day: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

If a student is going to be charged a different amount than the standard rate for his/her registration, the Override Billing Rate field is available for use. Note: this field is usable after someone has enrolled for a class, and assumes that invoices will be sent later. For schools using online registration, it may be better to use discount codes if discounts will be offered to particular people. Learn more about discount configuration.

If a school does billing based on the catalog item on the attendance record, make sure that each registration record for the student has a catalog item. When the system generates attendance records for each student, the catalog item from the registration will be pulled onto their attendance records. If the student is a drop-in, you will need to tie the catalog item to the attendance record manually.

Note: The Registrations tab on a class is distinct from the General tab (which shows class enrollment records) because a student may be registered for particular dates, but not for the entire span of time a class meets. While the General tab shows all actively enrolled students, the Registration tab shows all students who were, are, and will be registered for the class at any point during the time that it meets.

Managing Attendance

Attendance for Extended Care may be created through two distinct scenarios: registered students vs. drop in.

If a student is registered for a class, attendance records for each student are generated for every day that the class meets. The Expected and Scheduled flags are set based on whether or not the student is registered for that day. The Scheduled field will be blank on any day the student is not registered. The Expected field will be blank if the student is not registered for that day, or if that student’s master attendance for the academic day is ‘Absent.’

To take attendance for registered students, use the appropriate class query from the Today column of the Extended Care homepage. The resulting query will provide the administrator with a query of expected students’ attendance records. From there, use the Present flag to indicate the student’s attendance status. When the student leaves, check the Out flag. Checking this flag will automatically enter a time stamp in the “Time Out” field.

Students who are not registered for any class have the option to drop in. The Extended Care module supports the option for administrators to create drop in attendance records for those students. To indicate that an attendance record is a drop in, the Present and Expected flags should be checked.

It is important to note that drop in records should not be used for a student registered for a particular class if he/she is present on a day when not expected. Instead, the administrator should look for the existing attendance record for the day and mark the student as present on that record. Creating a new drop in attendance record will produce a duplicate attendance record for the student and may cause billing errors.

Attendance records for Extended Care are generated mid-afternoon, local time. If a student registers for Extended Care after these records are generated, attendance records for that particular student will not be generated automatically. To generate attendance for a student in this particular situation run the ‘Generate Attendance’ procedure from the Extended Care homepage.

Extended Care Configuration

Class Configuration

Extended Care programs are configured as classes in Veracross. To designate a class as an Extended Care program, the class must be associated with a course with the “Extended Care” course type. Once the class is set up, a daily schedule must be added and start and end dates entered. Most schools offer Extended Care classes outside of the regular school schedule. As a result, when creating the class schedule it is best to skip the “Block” field, but use the start and end times on class schedule records to set how long the class will meet on a given day. This information is crucial as it informs the system how attendance records should be generated each day.

Billing Configuration

In order to bill families for various types of registrations, catalog items will need to be configured. If your school uses Veracross Accounting, the catalog items can be configured within VCA. If your school does not use Veracross Accounting, work with your account manager to set up the standard fees. In general, it is common for schools to have a full-week fee for Monday to Friday registrants, a daily fee that can be applied to individual day registrations, and a drop-in fee for non-registered students. Once the catalog items have been configured, they can be applied to classes, registrations, or drop in records as needed.