How Can Faculty Easily See Everyone Absent During Any Given Class?

Jennifer Miller
Jennifer Miller
Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary
in Blackbaud Student Information System™

Our faculty take the attendance of record during our Morning Announcements. However, we also take attendance during each class to just account for anyone.

Is there a way for faculty to very quickly see who from their class is absent each day?

The instructions in the knowledge base involve 6 steps to check each student individually. We need to respond quickly when students don't show up to class and faculty don't have time to open each one.

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Comments

  • Nancy Kierstead
    Nancy Kierstead
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    @Jennifer Miller In our Upper School, we have an attendance manager who reviews Advisory attendance (our “attendance of record”), our sign-in/sign-out sheet, and emails & calls from parents and marks the attendance for all classes in the day for students as appropriate. This includes athletic early outs. That way when the teacher opens up their attendance each period, it will show. You can see below that this teacher already knows 1 student has an attendance entry from P3 and 3 students have attendance entries for P4 today. It's a HUGE job keeping up with it all, but worth it. The attendance manager also goes back and updates the attendance or record (Advisory attendance for us) if a student comes in late, etc. as needed.

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  • Jennifer Miller
    Jennifer Miller
    Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary

    @Nancy Kierstead
    Thank you for this and the screenshots.

    I did a test this morning and added a test student to a faculty member's advisory, as we all take attendance by advisory. Then, I added that test student to that faculty member's study hall. The Study Hall currently says ‘Take Attendance’. When I click the button, it does not show my test student as already marked absent.

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    Any idea what I'm missing or doing wrong?

  • Nancy Kierstead
    Nancy Kierstead
    Tenth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    @Jennifer Miller Hi again. When our Attendance manager enters attendance for a student who is going to be out all day or for one or more classes, she does it through Attendance>Home>Tasks> Add attendance for a single student. She then clicks “All day” if the student will be out all day, or chooses “Specific classes” or “Specific times” if that makes more sense (eg a student is leaving for the day.

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    Not sure if this is how you were entering attendance for the whole day?

  • Jennifer Miller
    Jennifer Miller
    Kudos 1 Name Dropper Participant First Anniversary

    @Nancy Kierstead
    We are still implementing BB, but are training our faculty now. The plan was for them to take the daily attendance of record first thing in the morning, and our division secretary would adjust throughout the day, as needed. However, if they are not able to see during each class who was already marked absent for the day, we may have to rethink our approach.

    Thanks for your help.

  • Shannon Krise
    Shannon Krise
    Fourth Anniversary Kudos 3 Name Dropper Participant

    @Jennifer Miller If you just want teachers to be able to see recorded absences from an earlier period, the only other option I can think of is to give them access to a report. You wouldn't be able to limit that report to just the students in that teachers class, but could give teachers access to an absence report for the day. You can grant teachers access to a canned report, or a basic or advanced list that you build. You could also create a clone of the attendance manager role for teachers that would allow them to access the attendance worklist or sky lists.

    They would have to run the report and then refer to it when taking attendance which is a nuisance, but unless you have someone record the absences as Nancy suggested, I don't think there is a way to have them appear when the teacher is actually taking attendance.

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