School calendar setup

A school's calendar is the foundation upon which other aspects of the school's setup and operation are laid out. A school calendar is a prerequisite for setting up any other aspect of the school. In a PowerSchool SMS system, a school has three types of calendars [Figure 178]:

To	You need this permission	Set to	Details
Create, edit, or delete school active or Planning Calendars	School Setup > Define School Calendar	Yes	[>>]
Work in the Planning Calendar	Admin > Access to Planning Calendar	Yes	[>>]

Managing a school's calendars

To manage a school's calendars

[You can do this if your role is School Administrator.SA]:

In the Admin menu, click School Setup. The School Setup page appears.

Under Calendar, click School Calendars. The School Calendars page appears [Figure 178].

To change a calendar's name, click the calendar and in the School Calendar Name column, enter a new name.

The name must be unique among calendars in the system.

To change a calendar's date range, click the calendar and in the Start and End columns change the dates.

Warning: Be extremely cautious with date changes. Changing the date range of a calendar can affect scheduling and attendance.

To delete a Planning Calendar, select the calendar and in the Actions menu click Delete Calendar.

You cannot delete an Active or Historical Calendar.

If you delete a Planning Calendar, you will need to recreate any Planning Calendar-specific data you had entered.

Click OK.

To create a school's Planning Calendar

[You can do this if your role is School Administrator.SA]:

In the Admin menu, click School Setup. The School Setup page appears.

Under Calendar, click School Calendars. The School Calendars page appears [Figure 178].

To create a new calendar, in the Actions menu click Add Calendar. PowerSchool SMS adds a new row to the list of calendars and enters the date the calendar was created, the release in which the calendar was created, the name of the associated district calendar, and a calendar type of "Planning".

If a school has the calendars it needs, Add Calendar is not available.

Set options, which include:

School Calendar Name: A unique name describing the calendar, such as "2007-2008".

Start and End: Sets the date range, ensure:

Is from 1 to 550 days. A typical number of days is 365.

Includes a number of days at least double the number of terms.

Encompasses all attendance reporting periods [>>].

Encompasses all scheduling term reporting periods [>>].

Encompasses all grading periods [>>].

Does not overlap any other school calendar.

Ensure that the Start date:

Is at least one day before students actually attend school, so that the start date is not the same day that the first Attendance Reporting Period begins.

Is on or after the Start date of the district calendar identified in the Associated District Calendar column.

Is the same day of the week as the Start date of the Active Calendar. This is because on a system that employs program management, program session start dates are linked to the Planning Calendar's start date.

Is later than the district calendar start date at a school that has a year-round calendar where returning students receive both a withdrawal and enrollment code.

Ensure that the End date is on or before the End date of the district calendar identified in the Associated District Calendar column.

View other information, which includes:

Creation Date: The date the calendar was created.

Release: The PowerSchool SMS software release number in use when the calendar was created.

Associated District Calendar: The district-level calendar associated with this particular school calendar. A change in one may cause a change in the other [>>].

Type: The type of calendar, such as Active see School Active Calendar [>>], Planning see School Planning Calendar [>>], or Historical see School Historical Calendar [>>].

Click OK.