This lesson is designed as a series of questions to ensure that the district has thought of everything surrounding attendance setup. While this will endeavor to ask all pertinent questions surrounding attendance setup, there may be instances that are not covered. As always, please check with your Customer Success Manager should any questions or concerns arise.
1. Have Reporting Periods been set correctly at the district level and for all school sites?
2. Are any Reporting Periods above 22 days? Has this been cleared with your auditor?
3. Have the corresponding Reporting period dates been shared with your DO and Site staff?
1. Are the attendance flags set appropriately in categories such as Excused vs. Unexcused Absences and Tardies?
2. Are flags set appropriately to deal with Short Term Independent Study? Home Hospital?
3. Are there any attendance marks that are unique to your district that you need to set and track?
4. Have Attendance Truancy and Tardy letters been created and tied to the appropriate flags for tracking? Is there a process in place for site secretaries on generating and tracking these letters?
1. Have Day Types been setup correctly, so that in-session days are set as such?
2. Have all official school dates been adjusted to an in-session day type?
3. Have weekends been set as out-of-session days?
4. Have all Holidays, PD days, and non-student days been set as out-of-session dates?
5. Have all Minimum days, Test Days, Rotating days, etc. been set correctly?
1. Have all appropriate period Timeblocks been set up?
2. For each applicable period in which attendance is taken, have timeblock occurrences been set? Have these minutes been entered for each day the period occurs and for each unique day type?
1. What type of funding categories are needed in the ADA report? Illuminate defaults all courses/sections to regular education and all other necessary categories need to be managed at the course or section level.
2. Does the District of Residence (DOR) need to be tracked for any students that live outside of the district boundaries? DOR is tracked in Illuminate through the District of Residence tied to a students' transfer record. Have these been setup?
3. Have you reviewed the Help documentation on basic Attendance Balancing in Illuminate and verified if any additional procedures/documentation will be needed by district auditors?
4. ADA is based off of scheduling information however enrollment reports are often used to verify student numbers are accurate. If a student is placed in an enrollment funding category are they also placed in courses/sections with the same funding category? View the information found in the Gains and Losses report as well as Enrollment by teacher to see if these meet your needs.
5. Have you and your staff review our Attendance technical Manual? Click Here if not!
1. Does your district collect CSR funds? If so verify the report options in advance for the following reports; CSR Summary, Class Size Compliance, and Class Summary to ensure that the setup allows for the reports to be run based on the needs of the district.
2. Independent Study often requires special handling for CSR. Have procedures been set up for this?
1. Is attendance being taken daily by all teachers? Are teachers being held accountable for late or missed attendance?
2. Is there a process in place for secretaries?
3. Is there a process in place for substitute teachers and attendance?
4. Are all absences being reconciled? Meaning that all absences are changed from an unverified absence to some type of excused or unexcused status.
5. Is the office staff ready to complete daily tasks outlined in your attendance procedures?
1. Does your district manage any charter schools? If so, how do you need to report on these schools? Are combined totals needed?
2. The district that oversees the charter school often wants to track information such as in district vs. out of district students. Has this been set up as a special transfer situation in Illuminate?
3. Have test reports been run to confirm accurate setup?
1. Are any of your schools are programs set up on a minute or hourly attendance program? This is often the case for long term independent study or continuation school. If so, special handling will be required to change the illuminate default attendance type from negative to positive attendance.
2. Are you and your staff aware of the additional requirements and differing reports necessary for handling Positive Attendance?
1. Has your district developed and implemented compliant Attendance practices and procedures within Illuminate?
2. Are your sites intimately familiar with the Daily, Weekly, and Monthly reporting requirements?
3. Does your district have a plan on how to ensure accurate reporting of Attendance and ADA? (i.e. are there internal auditing practices in place for month end reports?)