How do I set up Attendance Code Categories for Student Not Expected (SNE) for Vermont State Reporting?

Introduction

This article is designed to guide you through how to set up Attendance Code Categories when high school students are not required to take classes every day of the week. This is tracked in the End of Year (DC#04) submission via attendance.

Reporting Student Not Expected (SNE) to the State

Students who are not expected on certain days of the week need to be reported in a specific way, using the SNE attendance code. The Vermont Agency of Education (AOE) expects the following settings when reporting students as Not Expected for particular day(s).

“Days students are not scheduled to attend due to not having any classes should be coded as SNE (Student Not Expected)”.

At the school level > from the Start Page in PowerSchool > Select School (Setup)

There are two areas that need specific settings in order to report SNE correctly to the State.

1. Attendance Codes
2. Attendance Code Categories

Attendance Codes

1 – Select Attendance Codes (Attendance)

Once Attendance Codes have been selected, click on the “Student Not Expected” hyperlink.

This will take you into the “Student Not Expected” attendance code screen to edit.

The following settings should be applied to Student Not Expected (SNE) code.

1. Code – NE
   • This will display as SNE in the output file
2. Description
   • Student Not Expected
3. Code Categories
   • Student Not Expected – (Student Not Expected – SLDS_07_PS_Att (ABSCATID))
4. This attendance code is considered in ADA calculations
   • Should be checked in order for the SNE code to extract correctly
5. This attendance code counts towards membership
   • Should be checked in order for the SNE code to extract correctly
6. Click Submit

Attendance Code Categories

2 – Select Attendance Code Category Order

The Attendance Code Categories must be in a specific sort order according to Vermont PowerSchool SIS Help.

From the Start Page > select School (under) Setup > Attendance Code Categories (under Attendance) > to set the order of Attendance Code Categories.

3 – Using SNE in Attendance

To set up Attendance to track when students are not expected in school consider the following.

• Scheduling Method
  • Consider the “Scheduling Method” specific to your school. This will help guide you on setting up SNE for Attendance.
• Cycle Days – does your school update the “cycle days” when a snow day is observed?
  • If yes, those students scheduled in the future with SNE will need to be updated, so as to not orphan attendance.
  • If no, the “cycle days” can remain as is.

4 – Reviewing the 7_PS_Att file

To view the results of the SNE setup, an overnight refresh will likely be required. Once that has occurred, generate the 7_PS_Att report and confirm that ABSCATID (column G) is displaying code SNE, and DAILY_STATUS (column E) is displaying ABS as expected.  

07_PS_Att File Output

• DAILY_STATUS = ABS
• ABSCATID = SNE

By following the steps outlined above, students who are not required to attend school every day of the week will be accurately reporting to the State.