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Our scheduler wants to learn from other

Brian Gray

We are in the process of migrating from EE to SIS/LMS. Our scheduler would like to talk with someone who has experience with scheduling in SIS to get some suggestions on how to get started, and warning of things to avoid.

We are scheduling about 500 students in grades 9-12.
We have an 8-day rotating schedule.
Students will enter course requests for in the SIS, starting in mid-April.
Our scheduler has many years of experience in EE scheduling. She builds the master schedule by hand and then lets the software assign students to sections.

If you have experience doing this in the SIS and are willing to talk with our scheduler for a while, please contact me.

bgray@sstx.org

512-327-1213

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Megan Morris

I’d be happy to talk with her. We also used EE prior to moving to the new system.

Megan Morris

Sorry - posted too quickly. Feel free to have her email me - Megan.morris@lovett.org

Kate Warner

I'm also happy to help! mkw@ehsmail.org

Peggy Lehman

Greetings.

I am also happy to chat. I have never used EE's scheduling system, but I have used ClassA and ScheduLogic (ISM) before switching to Schedule Maker in On. This will be my 3rd year using Schedule Maker. We have a 7 day rotating schedule with tumbling blocks - a block does not occur in a static timeframe but rather cycles through all of the periods over the course of the 7 days.

Peggy Lehman

pLehman@LaurelSchool.org

Brian Gray

Thanks to all who replied - both here and via email. Our scheduler has enough contacts with others for now.

bkg

Bonnie Moore

Good Afternoon All-

We are in the same boat. We have a new Data Manager that would love to connect with other Blackbaud users for help with scheduling. We have run the master schedule several times but students are not scheduling into sections that are available without a conflict. We have reached out to Blackbaud Support, however they tell us it may be two weeks before someone could assist. Truly, any help or assistance would be greatly appreciated. Please feel free to contact me at bmoore@stmarkshs.net

Take care and stay well,

Bonnie Moore

Krista Peterson

Hello, Bonnie,

I had the same experience a few weeks ago, created a case, and had much back and forth with BBaud about it. Whenever I would run scheduling, students were not scheduled for available sections. BBaud could not be convinced that the problem was not on my end (i.e. that there were conflicts of which I wasn't aware). We're a small school, and I finally gave up on it and scheduled manually (the Student Enrollment function makes it pretty easy.)

I realize this is not all that helpful for solving the issue, but I did want to let you know that you are not alone in this - it is definitely an issue. (In case you have the same experience with support.) Best of luck in figuring it out - pressure is on, isn't it! ?

Kind regards,

Krista

Krista Peterson
Director of Studies
Church Farm School | 1001 E Lincoln Hwy
Exton, PA 19341
Office: 610-280-6712

Bonnie Moore

Hi
Krista,

Thank
you so much for responding to my post. It sounds like you
were experiencing the same situation with Blackbaud. We also
gave up and are scheduling manually. We are a school of 600
so it's a bit of a problem but we are plugging away at
it.

Blackbaud could not explain the situation to us either. We were
waiting for over a week for Chat Support to explain the situation
only to be told that they were continuing to look into it.
Having used other scheduling programs, BB scheduling leaves much to
be desired.

Again,
I appreciate your response. It proves we are not the only
school experiencing this problem.

Good
luck with your schedule as well!

Take
care and stay safe,

Bonnie

Mrs. Bonnie
Moore

Saint Mark's High School

Executive Assistant to Principal

Phone: 302-757-8704

Fax: 302-738-5132

Jesus said, "With people it is
impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with
God." Mark 10:27

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Kate Warner

Hi Bonnie,

Is it possible that the target class size (on the schedule tab of each course) is too low? The scheduler won't put anyone in a section once it reaches the target size. That was my first thought. But if that's not it, I'm not sure why it would be doing that!

Personally, I use the scheduler as a place to start, then spend over a month tweaking the schedule. We have a million singleton classes so there's no way the scheduler could do it all. But I had my best year with the Blackbaud scheduler this year - I think it gave about 3/4 of the students complete schedules on its own, which is much better than usual!

Kate

Bonnie Moore

Hi
Kate,

Thanks
for responding to my post. Completed schedules at 75%
is great.

After
much fiddling, I was able to get the schedule to 82% and now we are
hand scheduling all the other requests that did not schedule.
I believe the rules were causing us issues, once I
changed those to try instead of follow, the system scheduled
better. We have many singletons that were an issue as
well.

We did
adjust the target class size as well.

Thanks
again for reaching out.

Take
care and stay safe!

Bonnie

Mrs. Bonnie
Moore

Saint Mark's High School

Executive Assistant to Principal

Phone: 302-757-8704

Fax: 302-738-5132

Jesus said, "With people it is
impossible, but not with God; for all things are possible with
God." Mark 10:27