This checklist reviews essential attendance setup options and attendance reports in order for districts and schools to optimize setup, reduce attendance errors, ensure accurate attendance tracking, and use reports effectively.
Before the school year begins, review and update attendance codes, as needed.
Key Items to Review:
- Title - Ensure the Title of the code provides a clear description to ensure consistency in usage.
- Short Name - Ensure the short name aligns with district policies for reporting purposes.
- Type - Select whether this code is only for office use (administrators only), or both office and teacher use (teachers and administrators).
- Default for Teacher - Select the Default for Teacher checkbox for the attendance code will be auto-filled when teachers take attendance.
- Excused, Tardy, Discipline, Sub, Not in Class - Set these options on the appropriate codes.
See Attendance Setup for more information on setting up attendance codes.
Before the school year begins, review and update bell schedules, as needed.
Key Items to Review:
- Title - Ensure the Title of the code provides a clear description to help staff and students identify the time block, e.g. 1st Period, Lunch, etc.
- Short Name - Review the short names, which are abbreviated or short hand names for each period, e.g. 01. Short names are used in various reports and attendance records.
- Start Time, End Time - Review start and end times for each period. This setup is especially important when using the attendance check in and check out functionality.
- Used for Attendance, Required for Scheduling - Select "Used for Attendance" if attendance will be taken during this period. Select "Required for Scheduling" if students will be scheduled into courses during this period.
See Periods for more information on setting up bell schedules and periods.
Before the school year begins, review and update the calendar configuration.
Key Item to Review:
- On each calendar, ensure all school days where attendance will be taken have a green check mark on the calendar. Attendance can only be taken on days that are marked as being in session. Ensure holidays or other school breaks are not selected with a check mark.
See Attendance Calendar for more information on setting up calendars.
Before the school year beings, review sections on the Master Schedule Report or in Courses & Sections to ensure key items are configured.
Key Items to Review:
- Class Weekly Minutes - Enter the total number of minutes the class meets each week. This helps ensure attendance tracking is accurate and FTE calculations are correct.
- Days/Meeting Days - Select the days of the week the class meets.
- Takes Attendance - Ensure all sections that will take attendance have this option selected.
- Bell Schedule - Assign the appropriate bell schedule to the section.
- Calendar - Assign the appropriate attendance calendar to the section.
See Master Schedule Report and Courses & Sections for more information on setting up sections and configuring section fields.
On the Workflow Triggers screen, triggers can be set up to generate letters, send emails, or create Portal alerts for daily or period attendance updates.
On the Scheduled Jobs screen, there are several attendance-related scheduled jobs that can be created and run on a scheduled basis.
Key Attendance Scheduled Jobs:
- Attendance Thresholds - If attendance threshold rules have been set up in the Attendance Setup screen, this job will review attendance entered for students and add detentions based on the attendance threshold rules. The detentions are added to the Detention List. This job also will generate communications based on the Communication Template selected on attendance threshold rules.
- Attendance Daily Triggers - If attendance workflow triggers are set up in the Workflow Triggers screen, this job queues up attendance letters based on the attendance triggers.
See Scheduled Jobs for more information on setting up and using the various built-in scheduled jobs.
The Attendance tab in System Preferences houses many system preferences that are related to the attendance functionality in Focus.
Key System Preferences to Review:
- Default Attendance if no attendance entered - Set the default attendance status when no attendance has been entered for a student (Absent or Present). This ensures that the system has a consistent status when attendance is not manually recorded.
- Allow teachers to view the previous days' attendance - This option allows teachers to view attendance records from previous days. This helps teachers track student attendance history and verify prior entries.
- Allow teachers to modify the previous days' attendance - This option allows teachers to make changes to attendance records for previous days if needed. This option provides flexibility to correct errors or adjust attendance when necessary.
- Minutes before period attendance is considered late - This option is used to define the number of minutes past the start time of the period after which attendance taken by the teacher is considered late. When a number of minutes is defined, the option to display teachers who took attendance late on the Teacher Completion report includes the number of minutes: "Show teachers who took attendance more than X minutes late."
- Minutes before period attendance is considered early - This preference is used to define the number of minutes before the start time of the period at which point attendance taken by the teacher is considered early. When a number of minutes is defined, the option to display teachers who took attendance early on the Teacher Completion report includes the number of minutes: "Show teachers who took attendance more than X minutes early."
- Allow teachers to modify attendance after pressing "Save" - This preference enables teachers to change their attendance throughout the day after initially saving it. It provides flexibility for teachers to update attendance as needed, even after the initial submission.
See System Preferences > Attendance for more information on additional attendance system preferences.
Regularly review the attendance reports throughout the school year.
- Attendance Chart - This report is used to review and edit students' attendance records in a chart view.
- Attendance Calendar - This report is used to review and edit students' attendance records in a calendar view.
- Attended Hours Report - This report is used to review students' hours scheduled, hours attended and hourly attendance percentage broken down by program and section, as well as a specified timeframe.
- Absence Summary - This report is used to review school-wide attendance information over a specified date range, as well as view a breakdown of attendance data per student.
- Perfect/Excessive Attendance - This screen includes four Attendance Reports: the Perfect Attendance Report, the Excessive Absences Report, the Skip Report, and the Consecutive Absences report.
- Absences by Course and Student - This report shows a total number of absences, sorted by either students or courses, and the calculated percentage of total absences per class days for the given timeframe.
- Print Absence Summary - This screen is used to print the data generated in the Absence Summary Report to be distributed as letters or as emails.
- Average Daily Attendance - This report is used to review average attendance for a specified time period, including average daily membership, student days present, student days absent, and more.
- Average Attendance by Day - This report is used to review absence data within a timeframe on a day-by-day and grade-by-grade basis.
- Teacher Completion - This report is used to track teachers' attendance status on any day, and includes options to view the teachers who took attendance late. The report allows administrators to take and edit attendance for any teacher and any class.
- Verification Sheets/Sub Rosters - This report is used to confirm, print, and verify (sign) attendance, as well as generate rosters for subs to take attendance.
- Check In/Check Out - This report is used to review the time in and time out stamps from the Attendance Scanner App.
- Attendance Bulletin - This report is used to review attendance data by the Report date (editable) and school including the following columns: Student Name, Grade Level, Student ID, Local ID, Daily Attendance Code, Time in, Time Out, Consecutive Absences, and Cumulative Absences.
You are done. Great job!