303 – School Setup - Collier County Public Schools / … SIS Scheduler Plus 303 – School Setup...

Silk SIS Scheduler Plus 303 – School Setup

Silk 303: School Setup of 18 Revised: 2/25/2009 ExLogica, Inc 2009

Overview This workshop (303 School Setup) involves important global information about how your school operates. In the Silk hierarchy of data, only district administrative settings have a more widespread span of control than the school administrative settings covered in this workshop.

During this workshop you will: • Finalize Calendar details

o Scheduling terms o Daily periods – number of timeslots o Custom meeting code name for each timeslot

• Finalize Courses Offered details o Adjust Offerings based on finalized registration packets o For each course, set the number of Terms and Required flag (highest schedule priority) o Override global settings for class size limits of select courses o Run Courses Offered report for final verification

• Finalize Room details o description and capacity o Run Room Details report for final verification

• Finalize Teacher data: o Course assignments o Schedule blocking o Primary room assignments o Run Teacher/Course reports for final verification

• Verify Student data: o Grade level o Run Students to be Scheduled

• Set up Teaching Teams • Set up Student Groups

o Guidance groups o Feeder school groups o Reading remediation o Special Ed o ESOL / ELL

• Create and test Automatic Course Request Rules (ACRs)



Silk Scheduling Calendar The Silk calendar contains information about your school year. A district initiates a new calendar year by creating calendars for all schools in the district. Although you create calendars at the district level, you must make any and all updates to school calendars at the school level.

Only the person designated as Scheduling Administrator edits the calendar. The Silk Calendar contains the information needed to

• divide your school year into scheduling terms

• set term begin and end dates

• set up the days in your scheduling cycle

• create custom names for class meeting times to be assigned in your master schedule

• map your custom class meeting time names to their Silk native counterparts

In Silk Scheduler, choose CALENDAR | EDIT CALENDAR and select next year’s calendar.

Choose the PROPERTIES button to open the calendar Properties dialog. The Calendar Properties popup organizes information into four pages:

General page The General page sets your school start date, and the days in your scheduling cycle.

Terms page The Terms page contains the scheduling terms for your school. A calendar term is the smallest unit of class scheduling in a calendar year. For example, if the shortest amount of time to complete a course is 9 weeks you would have 4 terms, or quarters. If the shortest course is 18 weeks, you would have 2 terms, or semesters.

Daily Period Setup page The Daily Period page contains the number of time slots in your school day. The times and bell schedules used to track class minutes will be set at a later date.

Meeting Codes page The Meeting Codes page allows you to create custom names for your meeting codes and to map your meeting time names to Silk native code names. Your custom meeting time names represent the time slots, the days of the schedule cycle, and scheduling terms that the classes meet.

Note: Calendar setup is critical to Scheduling; getting it right is so important that ExLogica consultants work directly with schools on the details their individual calendars throughout the scheduling process. We revisit the calendar as often as necessary until such time as all attributes of calendars are accurate and final, but no later than the date we create our first master schedule.



General tab The General tab allows you to set your school start date, and the days in your scheduling cycle. If your classes meet every day, check the SAME AS WEEK option. Silk automatically sets the day codes to MWTRF.

If some classes do not meet on a daily basis, clear the SAME AS WEEK option and specify codes in the Day codes text box. For example, if classes at your school meet on alternate days, you would type in AB or OE for Odd / Even days. You can even use the letters of your school colors, like BG for blue and gold.

Click the OK button to close the properties dialog and save your changes.

One person can save changes to the calendar at any given time.

Close the calendar and click YES to save changes.

Terms Select the Terms tab to add or edit terms (e.g., semesters) including term names and start and end dates.

You should include all terms defined for the calendar. A calendar term is the smallest unit of class scheduling in a calendar year. For example, a calendar on a semester system would have two terms First Semester and Second Semester. Silk allows a maximum of six terms.



Daily Period Setup The Daily Period Setup page allows you to specify the number of timeslots in your school day and the approximate bell schedule attached to those periods. A timeslot can coincide to an academic period or to an extra

Secondary schools set up a number of timeslots greater than or equal to the number of academic periods. For example, at high school you might schedule a homeroom and lunch in addition to your7 academic periods for a total of nine timeslots.

Silk does not expect or require elementary schools to schedule by period.

Bell Schedule

The Bell Schedule is set to the default bell schedule, which is applicable in Scheduler Plus implementations.

Start Time

Start Time is the time that first period classes begin. However, please note that the start time and all class begin and end times are for convenience only. What matters in Scheduler is duration of the periods, rather than clock times.

Number of Periods

Number of Periods equates to the number of schedulable class times in the day with a maximum of 31

Class Times and Passing Times

Default Class Time and Passing Time– These settings allow you to specify default class minutes and passing minutes that apply to most timeslots in your day

Selected Class Time and Passing Time settings are for exceptions to defaults, select a period and specify minutes accordingly



Meeting Codes Meeting codes are the internal designations for meeting times representing periods of the day, days of the schedule cycle, and scheduling terms of the calendar year. Silk assigns a native internal meeting code; however, Silk no longer uses its native format in interfaces, displays, or reports. Therefore, you must assign custom codes

To access the Meeting Codes window open the Calendar Properties dialog to the Meeting Codes page.

The table on the left is readonly. It displays the mapping of custom codes to the native codes known to Silk internally.

The pane on the bottom left is readonly. It lists standard term combinations for the custom period/day combinations.

The controls on the right are read/write fields for updating existing records and adding new records. When you select an existing custom code line item, its properties display in the controls on the righthand side of the window.

Native versus Custom Meeting Code Names

Silk assigns its own meeting codes internally in this format: 4MTWRF(Y). This designates a yearlong interval that meets 2 nd period 5 days per week. In the calendar design, Silk requires you to define custom codes that are more compact and useful in Silk displays and reports. You do this by translating the native format into a code that your school finds useful.

Examples of custom codes for the internal code 4MTWRF(Y) might be P4* or Per 4*. (The asterisk indicates that the code applies to all standard terms in your calendar.) Custom codes replace native codes throughout the system, such as in student schedules and in the dropdown for meeting time on the Classes form.

Meeting Code Naming Convention

There is a formal naming convention for meeting codes.

Silk automatically generates the term indicator for each custom code. The system creates a code for each standard term combination. For a twoterm calendar, Silk creates a code for term 1 (1), term 2 (2), and yearlong (Y) meeting times.

The meeting code has two parts: the prefix and the suffix.

• The prefix indicates the period and days of the week. In the examples, the day notation is not needed. It is assumed to be the same for all periods, equating to your schedule cycle definition. It can be anything you prefer, (only embedded spaces allowed) such as:

o Per 1 or Per1 or Period 1 or P1 o Zero period o Homeroom

Remember: No spaces allowed in the first or last position of the code.

• The suffix is the term indicator in required Silk format with no spaces allowed: o Term 1 (1) o Term 2 (2) o Term 3 (3) o Term 4 (4) o Terms 1 and 2 (12) o Terms 3 and 4 (34) o All Terms (Y)



Period Number

The period number is the ordinal number used to order classes on a student’s printed schedule. Based on this value, Silk determines the position of each period on schedule reports and displays.

Base Code

The Base Code setting indicates whether to include a meeting time as a column or row heading on matrix displays such as the Master Schedule Matrix report or the matrix display on the student schedule page.

Allow auto assignment

Auto Assign flag allows Silk to use that meeting code when automatically assigning times to classes. If the meeting code is used for specific classes only, the auto assign should not be checked.

Set the Allow auto assignment option for each period to be included in the process that autoassigns meeting times. In the example, we did not allow automatic assignment for Period 8 because we manually assign homeroom classes to period 8.



Add a new meeting code

• In the Code edit box, type a descriptive code up to 10 characters (This is the code prefix.)

• Indicate the Period Number and whether to allow auto assignment

• Click on the number of the time slot (left column of the matrix in gray) to select an entire row

• To select noncontiguous meeting time cells in the grid, hold the CTRL key down as you select cells.

• To clear the meeting time click once on any cell.

• Click the Add button

Change the attributes of a meeting code Please note that you cannot simply edit an existing code. If an existing code is incorrect, you must delete it, after creating its replacement code.

§ Select the code in the list so that its properties appear in the controls on the right § Make changes to the meet times, terms or code description; the Change button becomes available § Click the Change button to accept the change.



Silk Scheduling Options Silk uses basic scheduler options as rules for loading students. This specific set of schoolglobal Scheduling Options applies to all master schedules in the scheduling calendar.

From the Options menu, choose the Scheduler Settings command, which opens the dialog where you can specify schoolglobal settings.

General Control

Default Class Sizes –

Specify global defaults for maximum, optimum, and minimum students in a class. The Scheduler only uses the global default class sizes if you do not specify course sizes in Courses Offered or the district Course catalog.

Class Balancing –

Silk balances by Total Student Count by default. The other balancing options are not available in the current version.

Weight Alternate Requests ___% when creating class sections –

Enter the value that represents the percentage of alternate requests Silk uses to create class sections. Most schools set the value at 0 and add sections for alternates manually, after determining how many primary requests alternates have replaced.

Include Alternates when computing the conflict matrix –

Check this option if your alternates play a substantial role in avoiding conflicts. Most schools exclude alternates from the conflict matrix.

Apply global alternates toward electives only –

Check this option if you want Silk to prevent replacing a Required course (i.e. marked as Required in the Course catalog) with an alternate course request.

Team Scheduling Enabled –

Check this option to turn the Silk Team Scheduling feature on. This setting restricts the way the LOADER assigns students to classes. If enabled, the Team Scheduler schedules students into only those sections of a course taught by a teacher on the same teaching team as the student. See Team Scheduling



Teacher Options When automatically assigning teachers to classes, limit teachers to an average of _ classes per term – The number you specify here represents the maximum number of classes a teacher can teach: The master schedule builder observes this limit when assigning teachers to classes.

This setting global, meaning that it applies to all teachers in the school. Restrictions an individual teacher’s schedule supersede this global setting. For example, if you block out a teacher’s schedule for the first four periods of an eightperiod day, the master schedule builder observes a fourperiod limit for that individual teacher. See Schedule Blocking

Silk uses the global teacher limit in conjunction with the Teacher Courses that you specify in the Teacher record.



Set up Basic Data

Courses and Course Settings The way you set up Courses significantly affects outcomes in scheduling. Verify district course values using the Course Catalog Report and your school course values using the Courses Offered Report to make sure your course settings are correct before creating a master schedule.

It is important that you correctly set course properties BEFORE you create your first master schedule file. Changes to Courses Offered are reflected in future master schedules; they do not change the properties of courses in existing master schedule files.

Silk District Courses The Courses form contains the table of courses authorized by the district for all schools of all types (high school, elementary, etc) in the district. Courses with a status of Inactive in the district catalog are not available to schools.

When you select District Courses from a school context, you open the form that gives you access to all courses in the district of the same school type as yours. For example, if you are logged into a high school when you open the District Courses form, you see only courses with a school type of H (for high school) or HM (for high school and middle school).

You can access course information from the Silk Scheduler module or from the Silk Main program Courses view. The scheduler view is filtered to include only information essential to scheduling.

Open the Course Master form from the Scheduler module by choosing View | District Courses.

When you change a field or add a course to the District catalog, users in all schools of the same school type see the new course. For example, if you change an attribute (such as the Course Credit from 1.0 to 0.5), all high schools (schools of type ‘H’) see the change instantly in their view of District Courses.

In Silk, there is exactly one instance of the District Course catalog and it is available for viewing at all schools. Changes to district courses affect and are seen by every user. Therefore, only authorized curriculum officials are permitted to add or edit attributes of courses in the district course catalog.

Several course settings have an impact on the scheduling process. The following settings are set in the District Course form and cannot be changed at the school level:

• The Grade Level setting displays in the master schedule workspace, allowing you to sort and assign meeting times in groupings by course grade level.

• The Course Type identifies the course as one of the following types: academic, homeroom, pullout, or no time scheduled. The course type affects the type of meeting times you can assign its classes.

• The School Types identifies the types of schools where the course is offered. School type determines whether or not you have access to a course to add it to your course offerings.

• Course Status controls whether schools can choose a course from the district course catalog to create their own list of course offerings used for scheduling.

• Course Credit is the total credit earned for the course upon the successful completion of the full duration (see terms) of the course.

• School Can Override Credit If the district checks this option, then a school can override the district recommended credit value on its Courses Offered form. Default is not checked.



After adopting district courses into their school course catalogs, individual schools may override the following District default settings to reflect their schools’ needs.

• Required – This flag allows you to identify courses that an alternate request can and cannot replace in a student schedule. Deselecting the Required setting flags the course as an Elective. Required courses have higher priority when the class loader loads requests.

• Terms Long – The duration of the course referring to the number of scheduling terms that represent the full course content. Terms duration is used when assigning meeting times.

• Max Class Size – The maximum number of students to be scheduled into a class of this course.

• Opt Class Size – The optimum number of students in a class.

• Min Class Size – The minimum number of students that need to request the course for the Scheduler to create a class section.

• Team Scheduled – If this flag is set, the Scheduler schedules students only into classes of this course taught by a teacher with the same teaching team designation as the student. Default setting is unchecked.

Silk Courses Offered Courses Offered at the school level are a subset of courses in the Silk District Course Catalog. Before you can work with a set of courses at your school, you must adopt them from the district catalog.

Use the District Course Catalog form to view District Courses (View | District Courses.) Any courses you see are available for you to use at your school. Many of the settings can be edited once you adopt the courses you are offering at your school next year.

Print the Course Catalog report for active District Courses that are available to schools of your school type (high school, middle school, elementary or combined grade levels). Choose Reports | Course Catalog | Display and complete the prompts that offer options for filtering and sorting.



Use the Courses Offered form to adopt the courses you offer at your school. (View | Courses Offered)

Add or adopt a Course to your list of Course Offerings

• Click the green New Record icon

• Search by Course Name or Course ID and press Enter to see a list of all courses.

• To limit the list, type in the first 3 characters of a course name (such as ‘alg’ and press the Enter key.

• Press and hold Ctrl to select multiple courses from the list

• Press and hold Shift to select a range of adjacent courses or all courses in the display

• Click OK to add the selected courses to Courses Offered.

Once you add a course to Courses Offered, it is no longer in the list of available courses to pick from.

Find a Course you have already added to Courses Offered

• Click on the binoculars Find icon

• Press Enter to see all courses added so far

Some of the district default settings can be changed in the Courses Offered form to meet the needs of individual schools. For now, we’ll work only with Terms Long. Other settings are covered in later sessions.

Set the number of Terms duration if different from district setting

Terms Long is the number of scheduling terms it takes to complete the credit. Set the number of scheduling terms in your calendar that it takes to complete the course.

If you have 4 terms (quarters), it takes 2 terms to earn .5 credits, 4 terms to earn 1.0 credit, and 1 term to earn .25 credit.

If you have 2 terms (semesters), it takes 1 term to earn .5 credit, and 2 terms to earn 1.0 credit.

Note: SILK uses course credit to determine if students have requested a full class load. The Request Verification reports identify students registered for too many or too few credits.

Course Credit Schools cannot change the credit from the school level Courses Offered. Notify your District curriculum officials to fix any errors in credit value.

Note: Changing the number of terms duration does not change course credit in Silk.

Run the Courses Offered Report to verify your list of Course Offerings, the terms and credit. Choose Reports | Courses Offered by Course ID or Course Name. Make a note of errors in terms duration in course settings that need corrections.

Silk Teachers The way you set up Teacher records affects the ease of assigning teachers to class sections. Verify teacher data using the Staff List report and the Course Certifications report. Make sure your teacher data is correct before assigning teachers to classes.

You can create and edit Teacher records either in the Silk main program or in the scheduler. The scheduler view is filtered to include only information essential to scheduling.

To open the Teacher Master form, choose the Teachers command from the View menu and using the following tabs to display and edit teacher information:



General page This tab contains the following types of data:

• Teacher ID – Unique identifier that Silk uses as the primary key. Do not use spaces or punctuation marks. The Teacher ID cannot be changed.

• Demographic Information – Name, sex, ethnic code, birth date and Social Security number.

• Status –

o A Active. You can assign active teachers to classes.

o I Inactive. You cannot assign inactive teachers to classes. Since a teacher's ID is used on records that exist after the teacher leaves the school, you should not delete a teacher, but set the teacher status to inactive.

• Home School – This field automatically populates with the name of the school you are logged into. If you are adding a teacher from the district context, the school assignment is 0. If necessary, use the pull down list to select another school in your district. Note: If the teacher teaches at more than one school, use the schools tab to assign other schools to the teacher record. The designated home school and schools assigned to the teacher on the schools tab will have access to this record.

• Teaching Status – Click on the drop down arrow to select the teaching status from the list of lookup codes defined by the district in the (TESTAT) code table.

Department – Click on the drop down arrow to see the list of departments. SILK uses the teacher department as a sort option on the master schedule report.

Primary Room – The primary room the teacher teaches in. SILK gives you the option of assigning the teacher’s primary room to classes at the same time you assign the teacher to classes. (Rooms will be set up at a later date)

Is a Counselor – This flag should be checked for guidance counselors. Records flagged as counselors show up in the list for assigning counselors to students on the Student Basic Info page. See instructions below for adding counselors to Silk.

Teaching Status must be C for teachers to be assigned to classes and blank for noncertified staff. Active teachers with a Certified teaching status have a blue banner. Records with a blank teaching status (such as Guidance Counselors) have a yellow banner. Silk filters out all but Certified staff in the Assign Teachers dialog when assigning teachers to classes.

Home school is the teacher primary school of assignment. If you change this to another school, you will no longer have access to that teacher record. If you are not the home school and still can see the teacher, your school is one of the schools listed on the teacher’s School page.

Find a teacher

• Click on the Find icon (binoculars)

• Search by Last Name and type the first few letters of the last name

• Select a teacher



Verify teacher settings

• Open the Finder (binoculars)

• Click the Columns button to open the SQL select list driving the columns of fields in the Finder

• Place your cursor after the last item in the list and add the following columns, separated by commas:

o TeachStatus

o Status

o IsCounselor

o Deptid

• Verify that values in the new columns are correct and appropriate

Add teacher records to Silk

• Click on the New Record icon (green box)

• Enter the Human Resources number for the Teacher ID.

IMPORTANT: The Human Resources number may have leading zeros, which you must include if you are adding a teacher record to Silk directly. Once you add a teacher, you cannot change the ID, so it is important to use the EXACT correct ID.

• Enter the teacher’s first and last name, Sex, Teaching status (C for those teaching classes, blank for those not teaching classes, and Department. The Home School defaults to your school. Rooms used for the Primary Room will be added in a later class. Check Is a counselor if you are adding a Guidance Counselor.

• Click the green checkmark to save or the red X to cancel.

Courses page The Courses page contains the list of courses you want the teacher to teach next year. Silk uses this list to determine which teacher names to display (and which to filter out) when assigning teachers to classes. Courses the teachers teach this year are imported from the current year master schedule as a starting point.



Silk allows you to specify the number of sections of each course and its schedule priority. However, before you take the time to fill in these values for all teachers for each and every course they teach, consider the cost benefit. The program does not request enough detailed information from you to correctly assign exactly the number of sections of each course. The automatic process considers the number of sections for each certified course, the limit of classes a teacher can teach at your school, and whether other teachers have the same (i.e. conflicting) requirements. Within mathematical constraints, Silk assigns teachers to classes as you have specified, but in the end, most users decide it was not worth the effort.

The alternative is to wait until you have a reasonably correct number of sections in your master schedule, and then you can simply assign teachers to sections interactively.

Add a Course to the List

• Click the New button to open the Teacher Course Assignment dialog.

• Begin typing the name or Course ID and hit Enter to pop open a Find window

• Select one or more courses

Delete a Course from the List

• Select the course in the teacher's Course Assignments list and click the Delete button.



Schedule page The Schedule page contains the view of the teacher’s schedule once the teacher is assigned to classes. Silk SIS displays the current year schedule; Silk Scheduler displays next year’s schedule if you have a constructed master schedule open.

If you have a master schedule open, the Teacher Schedule tab displays a teacher’s schedule in one of three formats: list, detail matrix by days of the schedule cycle, and summary matrix by term.

With no master schedule open, the Schedule tab is available to allow you to block specific periods as open periods. Schedule blocking information is valid for every master schedule in the calendar.

Summary Matrix Format

Choose the Summary Matrix option to display the schedule for the entire year in a matrix format, with schedule terms as columns. This is the recommended display for blocking periods from being scheduled.

Schools School page contains the list of other schools the teacher teaches at. All schools listed on this page can assign the teacher to sections of the master schedules.

If you remove your school from the teacher’s list of schools, the next time you open Silk, you won’t be able to access that teacher’s record. You then must ask someone at the district level to add your school back to the list.



Silk Rooms The way you set up Room records affects the ease of assigning rooms to class sections. Verify room data using the Rooms Caps and Courses report to make sure your room data is correct before assigning rooms to classes.

You can create and edit Room records either in the Silk main program or in the scheduler. The scheduler view is filtered to include only information essential to scheduling.

To open the Room Master form, choose the Rooms command from the View menu and using the following tabs to display and edit room information:

General page This tab contains the following types of data:

• Room Number – unique identifier that Silk uses as the primary key. Do not use spaces or punctuation marks in the Room Number.

• Status – the Scheduler filters out rooms that are marked inactive.

• Capacity maximum number of students the room can accommodate. This number is the room’s fire code capacity. Note: If multiple classes meet in the same room at the same time, such as multiple lunch classes in the cafeteria, make sure the room capacity will accommodate the total number of students in that room at that time.

These items are optional:

• Description – room name. Tip: To facilitate building of the master schedule, indicate teacher name as part of the room Description.

• Location – user defined locations within the school.

303 – School Setup - Collier County Public Schools / … SIS Scheduler Plus 303 – School Setup...

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