Scheduling Checklist - Part One (Secondary) – PAEC Help Desk

The purpose of this document is to provide a sequential checklist for using the Focus Scheduling

Before you begin, make sure your site has been rolled into the new year.

Step 1: MIS Setup

MIS Staff should complete the following setup:

❏ Setup> System Preferences> School Preferences > Scheduling

Review System Preferences > Scheduling in the upcoming year.
Set Request Settings ahead of request entry.
Hide Schedules from Students and Parents. [Part of our Rollover instructions here]
Hide Schedules from Teachers. [Part of our Rollover instructions here]

❏ Setup> Periods> Required for Scheduling

Mark the periods that should be required for scheduling.

❏ Setup> Attendance Calendar

Make sure at least one day is marked on the Default Attendance Calendar.

Step 2: Courses

❏ Scheduling >Courses & Sections

Confirm that all offered courses are set up in the correct Subject folders.
Verify and clean up all courses.
Add new Courses to ensure the correct Courses are available for student requests. If a course does not appear when you attempt to add it, contact MIS to activate the course for you.
Correct courses in red or verify with the district that the course needs to be added to the Course Catalog.
Delete Courses that are not being used next year.

Step 3: Master Schedule Report

❏Master Schedule Report

Verify the information within the Courses tab (across the top), which can all be Mass Updated (always filter before applying Mass Update):

Prerequisites
Allow Students to Request this Course
Grade Levels

Step 4: Course Requests

❏ Enter Student Requests

Scheduling>Automatic Course Requests – If being used by the district, schools have the option of mass adding requests via District or School-based ACRs. These can be scheduled as a nightly job and saved for annual use.
Scheduling>Mass Requests – This is for a one-time request that needs to be added en mass and does NOT need to be saved for annual use.
Scheduling>Student Requests- Staff or students can add requests manually for each student.

Step 5: Request Reports

❑ Review Requests Reports: Scheduling Reports>Request Reports

Students with Too Few Requests (based on number of scheduled periods at school): click on student name to view student’s requests and add desired number of requests.
Students with Too Many Requests (based on number of scheduled periods at school): click on student name to view student requests and adjust either by deleting requests or designating some as alternates.
Duplicate Requests: students with multiple requests for the same course(s). Click on the student’s name to view student requests. Use the red minus sign to delete duplicate(s).
Requests by Courses: after correcting the previous 3 reports, view this report to see the demand based on existing sections/seats and the number of requests for courses by grade level.

Alert: Do not move on to the next step until all student requests have been entered, viewed and/or corrected.

**The below is intended for use with the Roll and Tweak method. If you are using the Master Schedule Builder, come back to step 6 after you have built your schedule using the Master Schedule Builder**.

Step 6: Run Scheduler

❏ Scheduling>Run Scheduler

This step may be repeated multiple times until the desired percentage of students completely scheduled has been reached.
Dependent upon the use of requests for lunch and homeroom, the percent of filled requests may be slightly lower for schools that schedule these periods.
Delete old schedules on every run (after the first run).
Set Up>System Preferences> Scheduling: Preferences set under scheduling drive the available options in the scheduler.

Step 7: Loading Reports

❑ Scheduling>Loading Reports

Courses with Unfilled Requests: determines the number of sections needed based on the total number of available seats.
Overfilled Sections (Focus will not overfill sections unless the option to "Override Seat Counts" was selected when the scheduler was run): determine if more sections are needed or seat counts need to be adjusted.
Underfilled Sections display sections with less than 50% of available seats filled. Review Underfilled Sections to check courses with seats still empty.

Tips: Courses with Unfilled Requests, Overfilled Sections, and Underfilled Sections should be resolved as much as possible, and scheduler re-run before reviewing the next report.

Unfilled Requests: These students didn’t get into a course. The option to "Exclude Alternate Requests" from displaying in this report can be chosen.
Percentage of Students Scheduled: displays the percentage of students with a complete schedule based upon the number of periods designated as "required for scheduling" on the Minutes setup in the Periods menu.

Alert: No changes should be made to Individual Student Schedules until the school has finished running the Scheduler.

Students with Incomplete Schedules: These students do NOT have a complete schedule.
Students with Conflicting Schedules: These students have a duplicate period on their schedule.

Step 8: Master Schedule Snapshot

❏ Scheduling >Master Schedule Snapshots -Use this area to save a copy of your schedule at that moment.

Click Create Snapshot to capture the current setup of the Master Schedule after the each run of the Scheduler
Enter a Description for each Snapshot
Make updates to the Master Schedule as needed per the Loading Reports
Run the Scheduler (be sure to delete existing schedules)
Create a new Snapshot after each change to the MSR and run of the Scheduler
Use the Restore button to revert the Master Schedule to any previous version based on the percent of students fully scheduled

**Limit who has Restore permissions**

Step 9: Schedule Report

❏ Scheduling>Schedule Report

Review the tally of all requests per course and how many open seats are still available.
Adjust as necessary and run the Scheduler again.
Take Master Schedule Snapshot

Step 10: Repeat Steps 6-9

Once the students’ schedules have been built, and the reports reviewed, the scheduler may need to repeat some steps.
Decisions can be made to collapse sections or add more sections to provide more sections for students to be scheduled.
Once the Teacher and Master Schedule Reports have been tweaked, the scheduler will want to rerun the Scheduler (remember to delete existing schedules first)
Look at the reports to verify the information. Make necessary adjustments.
Take a Master Schedule Snapshot.
Repeat this multiple times until the schedules look satisfactory.
Then, move on to individually scheduling students and/or adjusting student schedules.

Step 11: Individual Student Scheduling

❏ Scheduling>Student Schedules

Hand schedule students that didn’t get scheduled.
Manually manipulate the student schedules to adjust for individual scheduling issues.
Adjust ESE Inclusion and Pull-out Minutes and Meeting Days for the appropriate students.

Step 12: Before the first day of School MIS