Scheduling/Course Request questions - New Blackbaud user

Christine Jisha

Good afternoon,


My name is Christine Jisha, and I am the Upper School Academic Dean at Tampa Preparatory School in Tampa, FL. Tampa Prep a 6-12 school with approximately 700 students.


We are currently migrating from Senior Systems to Blackbaud, and are going to complete the course request and scheduling process in Blackbaud for the first time this spring. My tech department has been hard at work setting up Blackbaud so we can have an online course request process. Parents used Blackbaud this year for the re-enrollment process, but this will be the first time students use Blackbaud.


I have questions and would love to talk to someone about the policies and procedures you have in regards to the online course requests. If you are able and willing to talk to me via Zoom or phone, can you please let me know and provide your contact information so I can reach out?


Here are a couple of questions I have:

-Do you have instructions that you provide to students and families that outlines your school's scheduling process and procedures? Is that something you could share with me so I can see how other schools handle this?

-I would like to learn more about how people use Blackbaud to allow students to request AP classes and how you go about approving/denying those course requests.


Thank you!

Christine

Scott Chrysler

Christine -


We have used K12 for scheduling and course requests for the past 4 years. I am actually working on our master schedule for next year at this very moment.


Feel free to give me a call.


Scott

Megan Morris

We’ve also used online requests and scheduling for a few years, and I’d be happy to chat.


—Megan

The Lovett School (Atlanta, GA)

Brian Gray

We do online requests for current students who will be in the Upper School next year. We used the process for the first time last year. We will begin the process for this year in mid-April.


Advanced Math courses require a recommendation by the student's current teacher. Last year we did that by importing the recommendations. This year, the current teachers will enter the recommendations from the course page. You can control which courses require recommendations in Academics > Scheduling > Requests and Schedules > Departments and courses. There is a checkbox on the Course Requests tab for each course. If the student is not recommended for an advanced course, it doesn't appear in the list so the student can't select it. The student can talk with the teacher or department chair to request the recommendation. (Of course, the scheduling manager can also put the student into the course later.)



Students can submit requests. Parents can review - but not edit - requests. (This is a policy decision - not a technical limitation.) We control the time that students can edit requests by changing permissions in the Student role task list. The instructions videos for our students and parents are here: http://spartans.sstx.org/courserequests/


I can talk with you more if you have questions.