SchoolWise Documentation & News

<- Expand the file folders to the left to see all of our documentation.

See News Items Below

Aug 2024 - SchoolWise Changes

• HUGE CHANGE to STUDENT UNENROLLMENT PROCESS: The school/class unenrollment date (exit date) is now the last day in school/class (last day in seat). Click here for more information.

• The active student list in the desktop student form now only shows students enrolled in the selected school year. Previously this list showed all active students, even those with a future enrollment date in the upcoming school year.

• The school enrollment type dropdown picklist has been updated to include additional options.

• A new staff enrollment type for "Outside Contractor" has been added. This staff type will be ignored for CALPADS purposes.

• The Fiscal Year rollover is now completed automatically on July 1. Those who need to edit old accounting records posted in the previous fiscal year can now do so. Account balances are recalculated automatically.

• ExpandingLearning Program Tracking: A new day type option has been added to the school calendar for “Non-ADA Attendance” which allows you to take attendance (and scan meals) during non-school days. Click here for more information.

• Web Disciple Referrals: Disciple Referrals can now be generated from the SchoolWiseWeb application. Any staff member (with a staff web user account) can view,change, insert (create a disciple referral record), or delete a disciple referral record if granted the corresponding Student Access Privileges to Access Student Referrals. Click here for more information.

Aug 2024 - New School Year Tips

• Review the Post-Rollover Checklist in our EOY Rollover Best Practices Guide

• Verify that your course sections have been setup and students enrolled.

• For those using the SchoolWise Meal Program - a Meal Item rollover needs to be completed before you can scan meals for the new year.

• For those using the SchoolWise Parent Alert System - Automated recurring alerts need to be rescheduled each school year! If you click the actions wheel and edit alert contents, you can review/edit your old alert and set the new delivery time. Click here for instructions.

• If your school is set up for automated exports to a 3rd party vendor, the files will need to be updated to pull data for the new school year. Once students are enrolled in their ADA Grade Level (Period 0H) class for the new year, please contact James@SchoolWise.com to update your exports.

• TOMS Credentials must be regenerated every year (365 days) to continue the seamless distribution of CAASPP/ELPAC Student Score Reports (SSRs). Click here for instructions.

June 2024 EOY

• To help guide your school for end-of-year rollover and CALPADS submissions, see the following guides for more details:

• EOY Rollover Best Practices Guide

• CALPADS EOY Submission Guide

Feb 19, 2024 - Staff Web User Privileges

A new role-based privilege system for staff web users has been implemented. This enhancement provides more detailed control over staff web user account privileges which has become necessary as we expand the SchoolWise web capabilities to add more office administration functionality. You can now manage role definitions or assign specific privileges to individual staff web users. Most staff would have been unaffected by the changes but some staff with specific admin privileges may notice their access to information has been limited. Please review and adjust your staff web user privileges as needed. Click Here for more information.

Sep 7, 2023 - CALPADS Extended Support

• CALPADS extended support is available from SchoolWise to complete all 4 major CALPADS File Submissions for the School Year (Initial files, Fall1, Fall2, EOY and ISAC).

• SchoolWise can provide technical assistance to help you avoid external monitoring and oversight being imposed if you fail to meet CALPADS submissions deadlines as required Education Code (EC) Section 60900 (for more information see CALPADS Update FLASH #259).

• We can take care of all 4 major file submissions for the school year in time to meet CALPADS deadlines. We will let you know in advance when your files are ready for review and certification. This includes Initial files, Fall1, Fall2, EOY and ISAC. We will assist with error checking and work with your staff to make sure your data is clean and error free. We can also handle SEIS\SIRAS uploads to CALPADS and basic error checking working with your SPED coordinator to eliminate errors when SPED uploads are required.

• Please contact Chad@schoolwise.com for more details and pricing.

March 29, 2023

Google Classroom grades can be now be imported into a SchoolWise letter gradebook. Click here for instructions.

February 9, 2023

Your Parent-Student portal can now be customized to add 1 or 2 external links (ex. your school website) for parents or students to access from buttons on their home page. Click here for setup instructions.

January 2, 2023

SchoolWise Web User Interface Changes For Administrators:

• The new default admin home page is now a school office menu from which an admin user can select the web page they want to access. An admin user can change their default home page if desired (click here for more details). This user interface change only affects admin web users (regular teachers and other users will see no user interface changes).

• A Student Information link has been added to the school office menu to provide quick access to essential information for all students.

• The Administration drop-down menu on the top right has been streamlined with fewer direct links.

September, 2022

New export for Independent Study Attendance Collection (ISAC): The Desktop export 'STAS Student Absence Month for ISAC' (File Exports - CALPADS category) has been added.  As mentioned in CALPADS Flash Update 235, the STAS file will need to be submitted to the ISAC Reporting System for each of the months August 2021 through May 2022. That means an exported file will need created for each of the 10 months using the Month parameter in the export. 

August, 2022 - New Web Features!

• The Student Analytics System adds powerful data analysis and visualization tools to the SchoolWise Web Foundation module. Contact SchoolWise support to enable this new feature.

• Meal Counts by Student: This feature can be added to the gradebook online attendance form to order meals. Contact SchoolWise support to setup this feature. Click here for more details. 

• After School Program Attendance Tracking: Contact SchoolWise support to setup teacher gradebooks with hourly attendance tracking. We can also add a digital signature requirement for student pick up. Click here for more details. 

• After School Program Automatic Billing may also be possible for schools that utilize our Online Payments system. Contact SchoolWise support to setup this feature. Click here for more details.

October 11, 2021

New Excused Absence Reason Code code added for "M/B Health - Mental & Behavioral Health". On Friday, Oct. 8, 2021 Governor Newsom signed Senate Bill No. 14 (SB14) into law which requires that we implement a new excused absence code "for the benefit of the pupil’s mental or behavioral health". Click here for SB14 details.

September 27, 2021

The SchoolWise desktop “Meals” tab title has been changed to "Accounting" to accommodate  upcoming changes. The tab title change does not affect any meal reports for auditing purposes. The Meals tab was previously used just for the meals accounting. However, we are in the process of adding the ability to keep track of student accounting for other areas in addition to meals. For example, after-school programs that charge hourly or daily attendance, daycare, sports fees, labs fees, band instrument rentals, or any other fines or fees. Schools will be able to set up the additional accounting sites (or locations) as virtual subsets of the student account. So a student might have separate accounts for “Meals” and “After School Program”. These will all be viewable separately on the desktop student accounting page, as well as on the parent web portal. More details will follow.

September 22, 2021

New staff web account security settings have been enabled. You can now set the number of idle minutes before staff are automatically logged out from the SchoolWise web portal. You can set the idle minutes from 1-240 (120 is the default). Click here for more details on Web Configuration Setting.

September 1, 2021

How do I protect my average daily attendance (ADA) for the period that students are in quarantine or awaiting test results?

August 12, 2021

SB 130 Bill Distance Learning and Independent Study Setup

October 6, 2020

Web report 'Absent Log (Attendance Audit)' added. Please see the following for more details: Electronic Signatures

September 21, 2020

Video Training Courses Published: https://help.schoolwise.com/docs/search?query=video

September 16, 2020

• Reports for Distance Learning Attendance & Truancy 

• New Brief & to the Point Video for Teacher Daily Attendance Recording & Weekly Assignments Log

September 9, 2020

• New Feature: Teacher Reconfigurable Default Reasons for Engaged and Unengaged. Makes recording attendance super-fast.

• What to do when Parents are not receiving Parent Alert Notifications (Parent Alert System)

• New Recurring Parent Alert Template & Filter: Daily Distance Learning Students Unengaged (Send daily alerts to parents of students who were unengaged for Districts using our Parent Alert System)