Elementary School Features

Below are some of the features that we incorporated into the Elementary School Scheduling System.

1. It consists of four basic programs. They are:
   1. A master schedule generator that generates sections based on resource allocation of rooms, teachers and requests.
   2. A sectioning program that assigns groups (home room classes) to sections as well as special education students to special education classes.
   3. An attendance program that quickly allows a homeroom teacher to identify students that are absent or tardy and accumulates the results on an annual or user defined basis. This information, along with the students phone numbers and period to date history is presented in printed form for the truant officer.
   4. A bus system that identifies which bus a student arrives on and which bus the student should be on going home. In addition, it identifies individuals or after school entities that are allowed to pick up students from school.
2. Teachers are assigned to homeroom classes so that they can maintain the same group for all sections. This also allows the teachers to instruct several other groups in the same area. This allows for implementation of a rotating schedule where one teacher will teach reading for Kindergarten, first and second grade. These same students would be taught writing by a second teacher and math by a third teacher. This is an implementation of the “CHILD” program as developed by the University of Florida. This does not preclude a more standard implementation where the same homeroom teacher will teach all subjects.
3. Students are assigned to homerooms by the system where criteria such as maximum students in a group are considered as well as balancing either on ethnicity or sex.
4. The system allows the display of an individual students schedule taking into consideration not only his/her group schedule, but also any special education classes that the student is assigned to. This allows a nurse or office personnel to quickly locate an individual student.
5. Requests are assigned four ways. The first is to assign all groups in a grade to the same requests. Normally all students in first grade are assigned the same courses. Second an individual group in a grade can have their requests modified and third, individual students can have requests for special education courses. Finally, the system uses the four user fields in the student profile to assign students to special classes.
6. Popup menus allow the entry of courses for requests and for resource courses for teachers and rooms. This allows the entry of this information without remembering the course numbers.
7. A single program does all of the functions at year-end. This program promotes students, or requires them to retake a grade, graduates students who have completed elementary school and are ready for middle school. The program also copies data files that will be required for the next year's data entry and deletes those files no longer required.
8. The student master file contains information about various phone numbers, parent or guardian information. Year to date absent and tardy information and four user fields for other information about the student. These user fields can be used to identify students who require special classes. These are all contained in the student master file.
9. The system, as with all of Solstar's programs, is network capable so that many terminals have access to the data.
10. There is a user security system that allows only certain individuals access to certain information.
11. A flexible period system allows information to be entered or displayed either as periods or times. There is an equivalence program that allows users to define the periods and the corresponding times. These times do not have to be in any fixed amount of time but can be varied from period to period. For example period one can be from 8:00 A.M until 8:15 A.M. Period 2 can be from 8:15 A.M until 9:00 A.M. period three can be from 9:00 A.M. until 9:30 A.M. The individual sections of a course can be one or more periods long. You could for example suggest that a section meets from 8:15 A.M. until 9:30 A.M. or from period 2 until period 3.
12. Sections of courses can meet any combination of predetermined days up to 8 days and up to 7 semesters.
13. Sections of courses can have up to two teachers in a section.
14. Schedules are prepared for individual students, teachers and rooms.

Where do I go from here

1. When your system starts, it will be using the folder “DATA”. This is primarily a folder with blank data files. Using this folder, you can enter your own information. If you would like to see a sample containing a typical elementary school schedule, use the function to Maintain data folders. Change the folder to “TESTDATA” and you will have a completely scheduled system.
2. Create the school option record. This is explained on page xxx of the manual. Be sure that when you determine the grades, you enter the first grade of middle school so that we have a grade to graduate the students. In order to assist you, we have generated a typical option record for an elementary school. You can change it or modify it to suit your schools needs. When deciding on the number of periods, be sure to include period 1 for Homeroom period.
3. Enter the student information either by importing it from another source, or keying the students in. For importing, the import file is a flat ascii file 300 bytes long followed by a carriage return and line feed (hex 0D0A). The file layout is in the manual in the file section on page xxx.
4. The system is based on students being assigned to both a grade (K-5) and a group (A-Z). You can actually use more grades than K-5 such as P for pre kindergarten or 6. It is important to keep the assignments of the grade and group so that the correct teacher is assigned to the correct group. For new Kindergarten students (or any grade), the system can assign incoming students to groups in accordance with the maximum class size and by ethnicity or gender or both. See page xxx.
5. Determine the number of groups in a grade and enter that information under Options/Meeting Times/Set elementary classes on page xxx of the manual. Be sure to enter the other required information on that screen.
6. Enter the times and periods next. This is on page xxx of the manual. You can enter up to 14 meeting times. These times can be uniform in length or not. When you select a meeting period, the system will also remember the time. If you enter the time, the system will verify that time against the valid times entered here. Be sure to include the homeroom period.
7. Enter the courses taught at the school. We have left a typical list of courses at an elementary school in order to facilitate your data entry. If this is not correct, you can clear the course file using the system utilities and create an indexed file for courses from the file called “DUMMY”. Then you can enter your own courses and descriptions. Be sure to enter the grade associated with that course if it is for one grade in particular. See page xxx
8. Enter the rooms in the school and if a room is used for a particular course, such as the gymnasium for PE courses, you can enter the resource courses for that room. See page xxx.
9. Enter the teacher file as seen on page xxx. If a teacher is assigned to a home room, be sure to enter the grade, group and home room that is assigned to that teacher. Next assign the courses that the teacher will teach. If this is a “CHILD” program be sure that the teacher is assigned not only to teach his/her grade, but the other grades in that course. For example if the teacher teaches reading for Kindergarten, first and second grade, be sure that those courses are a part of the teacher's resource courses.
10. If there are classes (sections) that are fixed in time, such as lunch, enter those classes directly. If you use the master schedule builder, the master schedule builder will build its classes (sections) around those that are set in the class file (page xxx).
11. Enter the general course requests (page xxx). Entering requests for any grade will enter the same requests for all groups in that grade. If certain groups in a grade are different, you can use specific requests to modify the course requests for that particular group in that grade. For special education classes for students, select special student requests and enter the student ID, name, or press enter and the complete list of students will be displayed. Select the student and then select the course for that student.
12. You can enter special needs requirements in the student profile by using the four user fields (see page xxx). By using the mass change to request function (see page xxx) Solstar will automatically enter the special needs course requests for those students.
13. After the requests have been entered, go back to the scheduling report function and print a course request tally to see how many sections of a course are required.
14. Go to the Master schedule generator portion and enter resource classes (see page xxx). Follow the instructions for entering the resource classes on page xxx.
15. Run the master schedule generator (see page xxx) to create the classes (sections) for the school. The master schedule generator will assign teachers and rooms to the schedule.
16. Go to the Scheduling System reports and print a teacher schedule. The master schedule generator is simply a computer program with a certain amount of intelligence. We try to improve its intelligence, but it can never match the human intelligence. It is just a whole lot faster. At this point, you can modify the teachers schedule by displaying the class file to see what classes have not been assigned to teachers. Change the class file to assign the teacher in the correct time slot (see page xxx). You may have to modify other classes of the teacher to fit everything in.
17. Print a new teacher schedule and if this is correct, assign students/groups to sections (see page xxx.)
18. Print student schedules (see page xxx).