End of Year Information for Schools

End of Year Information for Schools
Posted on 07/09/2019

This email announcement contains important information for schools regarding the end of the 2018-19 school year in PowerSchool. Please share this information with other appropriate school staff at your site.

PowerSchool will be brought down for maintenance Friday, July 26, 2019, at 4:00 PM. System downtime may be up to 48 hours. The system should be available on Monday, July 29, 2019. Summer School sites will NOT be affected. During this maintenance, PowerSchool will be upgraded to the latest SDUSD tested release (version 19.4.0). Another communication will be sent with details regarding changes schools should be aware of in the new version of PowerSchool.

PowerSchool will be brought down for maintenance again Wednesday, July 31, 2019, at 12:00 PM. It is expected that PowerSchool will remain offline for the morning of Thursday, August 1, 2019. Summer School sites will NOT be affected. During this maintenance, the End of Year process will run in PowerSchool.

Other important information about the End of Year process is summarized below:

  • When the End of Year processes are complete, PowerSchool will be in the 2019-20 school year.
  • Schools will have full access to all of their 2019-20 students, including incoming students who were enrolled at other schools at the end of the 2018-19 school year.
  • Please do not withdraw or drop students who were active at the end of the 2018-19 school year.
  • IT will make necessary adjustments so schools using PowerScheduler may continue to do so, until ready to commit their master schedule. Please note, the commit process applies to secondary schools only, including K-8.
  • Elementary schools may continue to work on their master schedules for 2019-20 or take advantage of the open labs to finalize scheduling. Visit ERO for upcoming open lab dates.
  • While many reports in PowerSchool can report on data from prior years, most of the customized reports we've created on the SDUSD and sqlReports tab are designed to report on current data only. After running the End of Year process, certain reports will not provide expected results for prior year terms. PowerSchool recommends that users print some reports prior to the running of the End of Year process. Please see PowerSource Knowledgebase Article 9985 for additional information regarding specific PowerSchool reports which will not provide expected results for prior year terms.
  • Please note that Active Directory accounts will be disabled in early August for students who are graduating or will not be continuing in 2019-20.
  • Effective Wednesday, July 17, 2019, an informational message will be added to PowerSchool to remind users that PowerSchool will be unavailable for maintenance. This message will appear at the bottom of most pages in PowerSchool Administrator, PowerTeacher, and the Parent/Student Portal. This message will be removed once maintenance is complete.
  • Effective Thursday, August 1, 2019, the Parent/Student Portal will be disabled for schools in order to prevent parents and students from seeing 2019-20 scheduling information. When your school is ready, you can re-enable the Parent/Student Portal for the 2019-20 school year. Further instructions will be provided regarding how to re-enable the portal at your school. Please note, the IT Department will enable the PowerSchool Parent/Student Portal on Friday, August 23, 2019, at 12:00 PM for schools who have not already done so.
  • Important! The new version of PowerSchool will require parent passwords to be a minimum of 8 characters for the Parent Portal. Beginning in August, parents with a 7 character password will be prompted to reset their password to meet this new requirement. Schools may wish to mention this to parents, just in case they are prompted to change their password when logging into the Parent Portal.