Time to make it easier to manage tasks for students who cross divisions - scheduling, report cards, transcripts, course recommendations, etc.

Scott Chrysler

I have spent the last two weeks recreating classes with new grade plan groups to accommodate "all final grades in one report card column" wanted at our school. The "work around" of adding a new grade plan to the old groups was too confusing for teachers when some courses are one-quarter long, some are one-semester long, and some are year-long. So I bit the bullet and rebuilt the necessary courses (we now have far too many courses in the inactive category creating confusion and wasting space). As I was working with our middle school courses, I began thinking of the new transcript builder which will only include courses a given division. Not convenient when every single one of our eighth grade students is taking at least one course for upper school credit. Easy enough - enroll middle school students in upper school courses. But then I started digging. How does this work when building the master schedule? How does this work when students are requesting courses? Can an upper school course go on a middle school report card? Why is this so hard?

It is time the development team address this issue and make cross-divisional course enrollment, report cards, transcripts, scheduling, etc easier/available. Technology is supposed to be making our lives easier so we can spend more time with our primary responsibility – students. Having to manage different work arounds, rebuild our set up because of system enhancements, and the like achieves the exact opposite. Make the software work for us; not us work the software.

A very quick search of the ideas bank and the Knowledgebase returned the following items speaking to the need of Blackbaud to address this issue.

Ideas:

Cross Divisional Report Card (New Builder)

On new Report Card builder, please allow grade plans, etc. to be added regardless of which school they are associated with

Schedule Maker to show student enrollments for students taking a course in another school level

Would like View Master Schedule to check for conflicts with other School Levels, if students are enrolled in more than on Level

View more than one school level in Master Schedule

Prerequisites do not work across School Levels

Scheduling a Class for Two Schools

Students should see all of their course requests, even across school levels

All course recommendations across schools

Knowledgebase articles:

Why can’t a Middle School Teacher Recommend Upper School Courses?

Can a middle school student take an upper school course?

How do I add an Upper School course to a Middle School transcript?

I hope everyone is healthy and persevering. May you have successful openings.

Scott

Academic Dean/College Counselor
Episcopal School of Acadiana
Cade, LA

 

MJ Galat

I too have spent numerous hours trying to do workarounds to make find solutions to out multiple school levels.  I have recently met with my Account Manager and a Solutions Engineer regarding just these issues around course requests/placement, grading, and transcripts.   Their response was that we should pay to have an audit done on our current setup (I have tried everything in every which way) and supplemental consulting to assess our needs to meet our goals.

To know that there are numerous other schools looking for the same solutions makes me feel better but also frustrates me that Blackbaud will not work on these issues. 

Adding the new complexity of adding virtual learners to our classrooms further complicates things.  I had asked about adding Virtual as an option where we now have Day and Boarding for enrollment and did not get much or a response. (They of course suggested adding it here as an idea here in the community.)  The one option they had suggested was adding it as a program, but that does not really solve the problem.