Start School Year Procedure

Overview

Typically, the Start School Year procedure is run two weeks prior to the start of school, but at the very latest, must be performed the day prior to the first day of school.

Note on Report Cards and Progress Reports: Visibility for report cards and progress reports is controlled by the reports_school_year parameter on the configuration tab of the individual portal records.

Note on Rolling the Portal School Year Forward: At any point during the summer (before or after running the Start School Year procedure), the year in portals needs to be rolled forward. Read more about that procedure.

Before Starting the School Year

1. Verify that the grading period start/end dates (including grading period ALL) have been set correctly for the upcoming year.
2. Be sure that any “No School” and “Holiday” events are in Veracross. See more about copying calendar events for the upcoming year.
3. Recommended: Ensure that next year’s classes are entered with correct start/end dates and schedules (if applicable). Classes may be entered later but will require further steps, e.g., rotations being initialized.
4. Decide whether your school wishes to create separate households for alumni. Read more about creating separate households for alumni.
5. If there are any children who have withdrawn from the school in the past and are returning this year, ensure that their Exit Date field is cleared. Allowing an Exit Date to remain can result in the removal of their upcoming class enrollments.

*Note: If steps 1-3 have not been completed before running the start school year procedure, you will likely need to run this procedure again once these steps are done.

What Happens When the School Year Is Started

The Start School Year procedure performs the following actions:

1. All individuals with the role “Future Student” will be changed to have the role “Student.” If Future Students have user accounts, these will NOT be converted to Student accounts.
2. The parents of the students updated in step 1 have their roles changed from “Parent of Future Student” to “Parent.” If Future Parents have user accounts, these will NOT be converted to Parent accounts.
3. Student grade levels that have not been promoted will get promoted if newly enrolled, pending re-enrollment, re-enrolled, or accepted with enrollment in process. This typically occurs if students have completed enrollment after the school year was closed. Students with incomplete re/enrollment checklists will not be promoted.
4. The “Entry Date” field is populated with the date of the first day of school for all new students. The procedure will not override any “Entry Date” that already exists.
5. All classes scheduled for the first grading period (based on their class schedule record or where ‘begin_date’ of the class matches the start of school begin_date) have their status changed from “Future” to “Active.”
6. The M-F rotation day calendar will be initialized referencing the grading period start/end dates and holiday/no school event types. Non M-F rotations will not be affected by the start school year procedure. This means, for example, if the school uses a 10 day rotation, the school will need to initialize the rotation manually by following the Rotation Day Calendar instructions here.

* Note: Parent and Student accounts will NOT be created when the school year is started, but you can create user accounts for them at any time after the year is started. See more about creating portal accounts. In addition, after the first day of school, any new persons added to the system that have the proper role and criteria (‘portal access’ flag checked off if a parent, grade level if a student) will automatically have a user account created in the overnight process. You can also optionally configure welcome emails to be automatically sent to new parents and/or new students from the “Person Roles” query on the System Homepage. Any person role that has the “send VC Welcome email” box checked will receive an email from Veracross automatically if they have not already been sent a welcome email.

Also, if you publish progress reports and/or report cards to the Parent and Student Portals, the reports are still accessible on the Portals throughout the Summer. (Note: The reports will not be available for those students whose roles are changed to Alumni or Former Student upon the Close of the School Year). Veracross does not remove the reports until the beginning of August.

How to Start the School Year

To perform this procedure, run the “Start School Year” procedure from the Action menu on the System homepage. This procedure can be run multiple times if needed.

*Note: Each time the Start School Year procedure is run, the M-F rotation day calendar will be re-initialized and any manual changes that have been made to the rotation will be overwritten. Non M-F rotations will not be affected by the start school year procedure.

After the School Year Is Started

1. Convert future user accounts to either Parent or Student accounts (if applicable). To do this, run the “Create Parent Accounts” and/or “Create Student Accounts” procedure on the Action menu of the System homepage.
2. Configure the Rotation Calendar with any rotation day changes or alternate schedules as needed.
   *Note: if rotation days or schedules have been manually altered, re-running the start school year procedure will reset the rotation calendar back to the default rotation day and block schedule.
3. Remember to Re-display Student Schedules (if previously hidden) and display the Course Enrollment Document for parents/students (if desired).
4. The Active Grading Period will need to be updated to the first grading period of the new school year (documentation here). This is very important as it controls the grading period in teacher gradebooks, the creation of report card grade records, and a number of other things.