BEWARE WHEN CHANGING ATTENDANCE FOR A GROUP OF STUDENTS!!!
When doing a group attendance change, you can usually ignore the codes to scan for box. This is telling the system to look for an existing specific code and replace it with the code you have chosen from the drop down.
So when would you ever need to use the codes to scan for box?
Example: State track is next week and you know the kids are going to be gone. You do a search for all students in track and do a mass attendance change to school function. In the mean time one of your track members is sick and in the hospital so you have marked that student absent for 2 weeks. Now state track time comes and it is postponed so you go into PS search for all the track students and change them to present. Well in this case you would use the scan for codes box so that it doesn’t overwrite the absence for that one track member who is ill in the hospital. If you search for School function codes and replace them with present it will not replace that student’s absence.
Many times schools are making the mistake of using the codes to scan for box when doing group attendance changes and then the attendance doesn't actually get changed.
Example: You search for all of the students that are in track (currently all of the students are present.) You choose the code to scan for box and highlight the school function box and also change the code to set to be a school function code. Your attenance will not get changed correctly beccause you have just told PowerSchool to change only the students that already have the school function code in place and these students did not already have that code put in for them....they are present and you have told the application to only change the ones that are already marked as a school function!
Posted by Melissa Bitz at May 5, 2006 9:57 AM