School Cancellations, Delayed Openings, and Early Dismissal Calendar Workflows

Overview

Inevitably, you will need to cancel school, open late, or dismiss school early. When this happens, adjustments must be made to the school calendar. Below are several helpful workflows to assist you in performing these tasks.

Click here to read more about using Composer and Portals to communicate with people during these situations.

No-School Days

A No-School Day is a day in which all classes and activities have been cancelled and is commonly due to holidays or inclement weather. Below is how you should adjust the school calendar in these situations:

1. From the Main homepage, hover over the Add button and select Add a Group Event.
2. On the Group Event record, set the Event Type to No School from the drop-down menu.
3. In the Description field, enter a meaningful description, as this description appears on school calendars.
4. In the Start Date field, select the day that has no school.
5. On the Publishing tab under the Classification section, set the School Level and/or Grade Level and/or Campus that the “No School” event applies to.
   • To cancel school for a subset of a school level (e.g. Grades 1-3 but not 4 &5), separate “No School” events must be created for each grade level
6. Click the Add Group Event button.

Because these group event types are unique compared to many of the other group event types, there are determining factors you should be aware of:

• the Publishing tab determines who this group event actually applies to
• the Classification tab determines who is able to see this group event in Portals
• the Groups tab and Primary Group field are for reporting purposes only and have no additional associated functionality

Last-Minute School Cancellations

In the event that school must be cancelled on the same day, there are other things you should consider.

Attendance

Attendance records must be manually deleted if a "No School" group event is created on the day it occurs. You can learn more about batch deleting attendance records in documentation here.

Rotation

If the rotation calendar needs to be updated to account for the missed school day:

1. From the System homepage, click the Rotation Calendar link.
2. Click the school day AFTER the No School event.
3. Click the Context Menu in the upper-left corner, then select the Rotations option.
4. Adjust the Day to be the desired rotation day for the first day back to school.
5. Click the Update button.
6. Click the Pop-Out button for the record that was just altered.
7. Click the Action Menu and run the Initialize Rotation from this Date Forward procedure.
   Running this procedure removes any previously applied alternate block schedules, so make note of those days prior to running this procedure.

Late Openings & Early Dismissals

Sometimes, instead of a complete closure, school starts later than normal or closes early. When this happens, it is important for your school to have alternate block schedules prepared. Read below to learn how to build Alternate Block Schedules and apply them to school days.

Early Dismissal Events

For early dismissal events, we recommend that you create either (but not both of):

• (Recommended) an Alternate Block Schedule specifically for cases of early dismissal using the process outlined below
• an Early Dismissal group event, which mirrors the No School event outlined above with the following exceptions:
  • the event type should be "Early Dismissal" instead of "No School"
  • on the Publishing tab in the Classification section, only "School Level" or "Grade Level" options work to target the event — campus does not work

Creating Alternate Block Schedules

The best way to account for late openings and early dismissals in Axiom is to create Alternate Block Schedules ahead of time. Some examples of alternate block schedules your school can create in these situations are:

• 1-hr Delay
• 90-minute Delay
• Early Dismissal

To create an Alternate Block Schedule, follow these steps:

1. From the Main homepage, hover over the Add  button and select Alternate Block Schedules.
2. In the Description field, enter a meaningful description of the alternate block schedule, as this description appears on school calendars.
3. If the school has classes where override times are set on the block schedule and it should not apply on this alternate schedule day, set the Override CD Start/End to YES.
4. Click the Add Record… button to add the blocks for the alternate schedule. Read more about blocks here.
5. Click the Add Block Schedule button.

Applying Alternate Block Schedules

• From the System homepage, click the Rotation Calendar link.
• Click the day the Alternate Block Schedule applies to.
• Click the Context Menu  in the upper-left corner, then select the Rotations option.
• Adjust the Block Schedule to be the desired Alternate Block Schedule.
• Click the Update button.