FUTURE SCHEDULING FOR SECONDARY

SCHOOLS

ON

SKYWARD

After the course requests have been entered, your first step in the scheduling process is to clean

up and verify the requests. Start by running a job to see who has too few or too many requests.

Go to the Skyward Home page and click on Office-Future Scheduling– Request Processing-

Reports.

You will get a list of reports that

you can run. Click on the Student

Request Report.

A filter screen will appear and you will need to click the add button to set up the template for

this job. A screen similar to the one above will appear. You will give it a title and decide if you

want others at your entity to be able to use this template. Once you make this template you

don’t need to create it again. It will always be here under the title you give it.

1.Make sure the year is correct.

2.Decide if you want to run this report for a range of students or just a select group. Most of the

time it will be for a range. If you select range, you must also click on the word ―Range” to de-

fine what that range will be. For example do you want only 9th graders or 9th-12th graders .

The figure on the next page shows the range definition screen.

3. Check the report options. In this example we selected only students with requests.

4. Decide how you want the report to sort. Click on the word ―Sort” and check your options.

The system will handle up to 3 different sort options.

5. Now decide what you want the report to tell you. This example is asking for all students who

have requests, but who have less than 6 credits of requests.

6. Click the ―Save and Print‖ button.

This range definition screen shows that we are asking for all active students between 9th and

12th grade. When you leave the low range blank and the high range at zzzzzzzz, you have

opened the range to include everyone. Always save the settings.

Once you select the ―Save and Print‖ button you will see the job appear in the Print Queue.

When it is completed the word ―completed‖ will appear in the status column. You can then

click on the view button to look at the report.

Range Definition Screen

This is what the report will look like . The students name and grade level will appear and the

list of what they have requested. As you can see, none of these students has requested 6 full

credits. You can also run this report for students who have too many requests. This report

should help you clean up and verify the requests.

Once you are certain that all students have the correct number of requests entered into the sys-

tem, you need to look at those requests and determine:

1. Are there enough requests to offer the class,

2. Do you have more requests than you have seats available, or

3. Have students requested courses with companion fields incorrectly?

A good place to check for the answers to these questions is at the course master screen. Go to

the Skyward home page and select Office-Future Scheduling-Build Course Master– Course

Master.

You should get a list of the courses that you have offered for next year at your school.

By looking at this screen you can see how many students have requested each course for next

year. You can then decide how many sections you will need to offer, if you need to drop the

class, or if you need to remove students because you have too many requesting the class. You

can also check to see who has requested the class by clicking on the node (+) to the left of the

course, and going to the option to view all requesting students.

This is a quick way to verify which students actually did request the course.

If you do decide to drop a course, do not delete or mark it inactive. Go to the course master

(Office-Future Scheduling-Build Course Master– Course Master) and edit the course. Un-

der the schedule type, change the course to dropped. This will allow you to run reports for all

student requests of dropped courses. You will need to go to the alternates for these students and

select an alternate for the dropped course.

This may seem like a lot of work, but your job will be easier if your requests are accurate.

You are now ready to make sections for the requested courses. On the course master edit the

course. Then look to the right for the button that says ―Save and Add Section‖.

You will now have the screen where you add the section information. You do not need to add

the period, teacher or room number yet. You probably won’t know that information except for

courses that must be a certain period. That information will be added on the ―Add Meet‖

screen. Begin making the sections.

Section numbers can be 4 characters, but they must be added before any other information is

entered.

1. Class status– active

2. Class control set—either year or semester

3. Calendar—same as you school number

4. Bell Schedule—‖R‖ for regular bell schedule. The only school with more than one bell

schedule is EH Miller which has an elementary bell and secondary bell schedule.

5. Building - Select the building from the drop-down menu. I have found that if you click on

the word ―Building‖ your buildings will appear, but if you click on the arrow you some-

times get other school building numbers.

6. You don’t need to worry about the Minimum or Optimum student counts, but put in the

Maximum Count. This will allow the computer to warn you if you put too many students

into a section.

7. Make sure the Attendance Method and Grading Method are set to either Computer or

Mixed.

8. Do not check the assign seats option or set the number of rows and columns. This is for a

seating chart in the grade book and the teacher can set their own parameters.

9. You can set the maximum percentage of ESE students that will be enrolled in this section.

This is an option available, but not required.

Before saving this information it is important that you check the information in the ―Florida

State Specific‖ section. This is were the FEFP number must be correct to get the proper funding

for this class. After you verify this, you can ―Save‖ or ―Save and Add Meet‖. The ―Meet‖ in-

formation is the period, teacher and room number. If you don’t know this information for this

class, just select ―Save‖.

If you do know that a particular course must be a certain period you can enter the meet informa-

tion at this time. We call these classes the ―Gotta Be‖ classes.

In the ―Meet‖ information you will assign the period, teacher, and room. If you have already

assigned teachers to a room, the room should pop-in when the teacher’s name is entered.

Classes that are more than one period in length will need a ―Meet‖ made for each period. The

only difference is that you will remove the checks for display period and attendance period so

that the course doesn’t display in the grade book more than one time.

You are now ready to begin the scheduling process. You will start by running the Conflict

Matrix Report. This report will tell you which courses students are requesting in common.

For example, how many students asked for Physics and Pre-Calculus. YOU MUST RUN

THIS REPORT IN ORDER FOR THE INTERACTIVE SCHEDULER AND SCHED-

ULING BOARD TO WORK. You may also use this report to help place singleton and/or

doubleton classes. Go to the Skyward home screen and select Office– Future Scheduling–

Build Master Schedule– Product Setup– Utilities– Create Conflict Matrix.

You will get a drop down menu. Se-

lect ―Create Course Conflict Matrix‖.

When the screen below appears make

sure the year is correct and select

―Run‖.

You are now ready to begin building the Master Schedule. Go to Office/Future Scheduling/

Build Master Schedule/ Master Schedule Builder.

This report will make suggestions on the periods to place classes. It will not make adjustments

to the classes that already have meet times entered.

You will want to use the Interactive Master

Schedule Builder. The automated Master Sched-

ule Builder requires a great deal of set-up and

this isn’t practical for the first year.

You may want to use the Interactive Scheduling Board. You will need to go to Office/ Fu-

ture Scheduling/Build Master Schedule/ Interactive Scheduling Board.

Select Generate Student Schedules

This will give you the

ability to view the

master schedule over-

all, in either a course

or teacher view., and

for a specific semester

or all year. Class

analysis can be done

interactively in here.

You can also choose

chip colors for single-

tons, doubletons, etc.

Use Save points as

you try different

things.

After placing classes in periods, you will want to Analyze the Schedule by doing practice runs.

Go to Office/Future Scheduling/Student Schedule Generator/Auto Schedule.

When you set up the template for these runs you will set the range of students to show which

group will be scheduled first. For example if you want seniors to be scheduled first start at 12

and end with 09.

On your first practice run, you may want to allow a section to over fill so that you can see if

you need multiple sections in the same period. In the actual run, this needs to be checked so

classes won’t overfill.

Make sure you check the ―Create Student Conflict Report‖ .

You can ask the report to try multiply runs, up to 5 runs. This means the computer will try dif-

ferent combinations of courses to see if more students will actually get scheduled.

You will probably run this report several times and you will want to create ―save points‖. This

will allow you to go back to the save point if you didn’t like the change you tried.

When you do the practice runs you will see the percentage of students with conflicts. You will

be trying to get small percentages. This is the opposite of what happened in TERMS.

There are three types of runs you can perform: Actual, Imperative, and Pseudo. The Imperative

run is to analyze singleton classes only. The Pseudo is a practice run for all classes. The Impera-

tive and Pseudo are both practice runs. Do not run the Actual run until you have completed eve-

rything and are satisfied with the schedule.

There are three reports you can run that will help you as you are scheduling. Go to Office/

Future Scheduling/Student Scheduling Generator/Auto Scheduler/Student Run Analysis.

1. Total reports

2. Course Conflict Report

3. Student Conflict Detail Report.

There will be an attachment that goes into detail about how to read each of these reports.

Once you have the master schedule set where you want it to be, run the Generate Student

Schedules in the actual mode. I suggest that you set the program to do multiple runs. This will

help to get the most students completely scheduled. You now have schedules.

Your next step is to take the students who did not get complete schedules and try to fix their

schedules. Go to Office/Future Scheduling/Student Schedule Generator/Future Scheduling

by Student.