| Setup Attendance |
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The page is where Admins define all the attendance options for the school.
Set your school to collect attendance Daily or every Period. Elementary schools typically collect attendance daily, while secondary and higher schools collect attendance every period. SnapGrades keeps completely separate sets of data for daily and period attendance, so if you switch this option after teachers have already entered roll, their old roll will "disappear" and be completely ignored (it's not deleted though, so you can switch back to restore it). It will not attempt to convert daily attendance to period attendance or vice versa, so be sure this is set correctly before the school year begins. If teachers take roll twice a day (AM/PM attendance), select the Daily option. You can then define attendance codes to indiciate if a student is absent for just a Half day. For example, a teacher would mark a student absent in the morning, then if the student arrives in the afternoon the teacher would change it to a half-day absence. For Period attendance you can define how many periods a student must be present for ADA calculations, and how many periods to count as a half-day. If your state doesn't count half-days, select "n/a".
The Attendance Codes and descriptions for present, absent, tardy, etc. can be customized. There's no limit to how many codes you can define (though you may need to leave the page and come back to get more blank spaces). The 1st attendance code is the default, and it must mean the student is present. Teachers can select the 2nd and 3rd attendance codes simply by clicking — e.g., click once for Absent, again for Tardy, and again to return to Present. The pop-up menus define how each attendance code is to be counted for reporting. Note that Tardy and Excused count only for Report Cards, but for ADA calculations they count as Present. So if, for example, "Illness" is an allowed absence for ADA purposes, but you still want it to show as an absence on Report Cards, select Excused. If you don't want it counted on Report Cards, select Present. If it is not an allowed absence for ADA, select Absent. The No record option should be used where the student is be counted as neither present nor absent. Use this, for example, if you want to define and explicit "W" code for "Withdrawn".
Two options let you limit what attendance data teachers can edit: Select "Don't let teachers change roll after..." to specify how many days or weeks teachers can make changes. This also prevents them from entering future dates. Uncheck this to allow teachers to change roll on any date. (Admins can always edit roll in Admin mode for any date.)
Check the "Admin only" checkbox for any attendance code that teachers are not allowed to select or change — e.g., typically teachers may only mark a student present, absent, or tardy, but they cannot change it once the attendance clerk clears an absence, marks a cut, etc. |
