Student records management

Diana Holden

Hi all — I hope everyone is either on summer break or close to it!

We are working on updating and streamlining some of our backend SIS pieces and I am curious as to what the workflow looks like for everyone else — primarily student management. Currently, we graduate our seniors about a week after the graduation ceremony. Then we promote our Prek-11th graders and flip the year over — a few days after our final report cards for the year. We also confirm any withdrawn student status we have at this point in the year.

This has been our practice for the 6 years we've been with Blackbaud, but I'm starting to wonder if we are complicating things for ourselves. We always seem to run into a crunch time of getting all the steps completed in a manner that is helpful for our admin staff.

Thanks for sharing any tips for efficiency that you may have!

Diana

Brian Gray

Our process and timing are similar to what you describe. Our academic years start on July 1 and end on June 30. Our spring term also ends on June 30 (even though the last day of classes/exams is in the last week of May).

We usually do the process between June 15 and June 20 - after the majority of grade changes are handled. The external thing driving this is that College Counseling needs transcripts for recent graduates with an actual graduation date on them (instead of the estimated "June 2026").

The major steps are

1. Mark recent seniors as graduated and promote returning students to the next grade. Withdraw students we know are not returning - effective July 1, so that they are not withdrawn from spring term courses. (This is critically important - if the student withdrawal is effective before the start of the next year, the grades disappear from the report card and transcripts.)
2. Mark the next academic year as current
3. Reclassify incoming students as current students

Outside of Blackbaud, we also manage student email accounts for graduates, non-returning students and incoming students. We then re-build the Google Groups based on the new grade levels for students.

Diana Holden

Thanks, Brian. It sounds like we are completing our steps in a very similar fashion. We learned the student withdrawal lesson the hard way during our first year with Blackbaud!