Attendance Criteria Calculation Page

On this page:

Use this page to run the calculation for determining students who qualify for attendance communications, including letters to guardians and PLUS 360 notifications. The calculation, which is based on criteria defined in the Attendance Criteria Setup page, also can determine athletic eligibility, set students' at risk status, and create behavior incidents.

The attendance calculation creates separate runs to check absence counts:

The calculation always starts on the first day of the reporting cycle defined in the criteria, such as the beginning of a semester or school year.
The calculation proceeds to the date entered in the Date To Calculate From field to determine the student's initial absence count.
The calculation then creates a separate run for each additional date, as specified in the Date To Calculate To field. This allows you to run the calculation once a week and not miss any students who may have reached one count early in the week and another later in the week.

The calculation also determines whether letter records previously calculated are still valid. If attendance was updated since a letter record was generated and the student no longer meets the criteria on the trigger date, the record will be updated to indicate it is invalid. This allows the student to be selected again when the attendance total meets the criteria.

For more information, refer to Overview of Attendance Records.

Attendance Calculation Example

You have two letter criteria, one for 3 unexcused absences and one for 5 unexcused absences. A student has had the following absences during the reporting cycle, which in this case began at the start of the year:

Last week of September - 2 absences, 1 each on Monday and Tuesday.
First week of October - 4 absences, 1 each on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Running the calculation for the first week of October will generate a letter record for the 3rd unexcused absence (on the first Monday of the month) and another for the 5th absence (on Wednesday). However, if the calculation was run for Friday alone, it would have missed these letters, because at that point the student's count would have exceeded 5 absences.

Prerequisites

Verify that the attendance information you want to include in the calculation has been entered. If teachers enter attendance in Teacher Access Center, you can run Attendance > All > Reports > Missing Submission to see who has not submitted data.
Run Attendance > All > Utilities > Attendance Error Scan. Be sure to run this option for the buildings and dates being included in your calculation.
Correct any invalid attendance.
Rerun the Attendance Error Scan to ensure your changes are valid
If your attendance criteria is based on day totals, run Attendance > All > Utilities > Day Totals Calculation.

Calculate attendance communications

Select Attendance > All > Attendance Communications > Attendance Criteria Calculation.
Specify the report options.
Click Run.

Fields

Prompts Panel

Field	Description
Building	Building for the students being processed by the calculation.
Calendar	The calendar to use when determining the start and end dates for intervals. This field does not affect the students being processed.
Date To Calculate From	The first date to use as an endpoint of calculations. Calculations always run from the beginning of the reporting cycle to this date. Select: By Date - to use a set date as the first end date. By Prior Days - to run the process for a set number of attendance days. Prior days count backward from the end date. For example, if the end date is Friday and you want the report to cover a full week Monday through Friday, enter 4. This option is useful if you schedule the process to run periodically.
Date To Calculate To	The ending date of calculations. Select: Today - to use today as the last date to check. This option is useful if you schedule the calculation to run periodically. By Date - to use a set date as the end date for the calculation.
Criteria List To Evaluate	The notification criteria to check. Select codes from the field's drop-down list, or click (asterisk) to select all codes, then remove any that do not apply.
Receiving Communication Type	Indicates the type of list (or none) that should be created when the calculation is run. If the calculation triggers the criteria, the Generate Communication List option is run. Select: D - Detail - to create a list that includes the summary information, plus a list of each absence for the student, with the period or course listed (depending on the criteria used). N - None - to not create a list. S - Summary - to create a list that includes the calculation dates, criteria, student ID and name, notification date, attendance codes, absence count, absence totals, and whether the letter record or notification was generated.
Communication Method	Select whether you want to create the merge file for letters, send PLUS 360 notifications, or generate both. The Send Communications option is run if you select either checkbox. Select: Generate Letters For Parents/Guardians - to create the letter file. The file then can be downloaded to your PC and merged with form letters created in Microsoft® Word. Send Communications - to send attendance notifications via the PLUS 360 Notifications engine to users configured to receive notifications and optional email notifications. This includes eSchoolPlus users who have the required security resource; the student's Counselor; and the SSP Coordinator. Note To re-send a letter or notification, run Attendance's Send Communications option with its Include Published Communications checkbox selected.
Generate Single Letter Per Criteria	If you selected either of the Communication Method options, you can indicate whether to generate a single letter per criteria. Checked if you want to generate a single letter for the student using the most recent trigger date. This would be the absence date closest to the last notification date entered for the selected date range. For example, if you entered a date range of 10/26/2015 to 11/06/2015 and a student had letter records for 10/28/2015 and 11/05/2013, only the letter for 11/05/2013 would be included in the merge file. The merge file will still include the letter multiple times if more than one contact is defined to receive attendance letters.