This page describes the usage of Silent Dismissal for entities that provide extended care for students that are arriving from multiple schools.

This task is performed by a Local Administrator

Multiple staff accounts of different types will be required to manage the system information. Some of these accounts are regular Silent Dismissal accounts not directly required for extended care tracking but required for information management. Descriptions of these accounts with regard to extended care tracking are listed here.

1. Local Administrator - at least two users should have this account type. This is used to reset passwords and add accounts, students and groups.
2. Classroom - at least one classroom account is required. Classroom accounts are for regular Silent Dismissal in general. In this context they are used only to restrict management of the student records. Local Administrators can administer all student accounts, but it may make sense to divide the management of students among different staff members using some logical student attribute such as originating school, grade level, or by range of last name. This concept may not be altogether clear at this point and can be changed later if required, but suffice it to say that in most instances it will be helpful to distribute the management of students so create as many separate classroom accounts as is required to allocate this responsibility.
3. Aftercare - these accounts are used for checking student into and out of care. In most instances all on site staff will have an account of this type in addition to having either an administrator account or a possibly a classroom account
4. Aftercare Kiosk - this account type is used to sign in a kiosk that may be used by parents when picking up students from the site. The number of these accounts generally corresponds to the number of different entrances at the site or may include multiple kiosks at the main entrance. Kiosks are generally signed into touchscreen type devices such as iPads or Android tablets.

These steps are only required during initial system set up. Subsequent records are generally added individually using Menu: Accounts / New. Read here about creating accounts.

To bulk load the staff accounts, create the data in a spreadsheet using this format.

The bulk load operation is located at Menu: Accounts / Bulk Load

Once the staff accounts are created, it is necessary to obtain the reference codes for the classroom accounts to create student records. The reference code list is located at Menu: Reports / Data Review::Staff Reference. This information will be included on the student bulk load spreadsheet.

During initial set up, it is most convenient to add student records in bulk. Adding Students

Follow the format guidelines for the bulk Load student spreadsheet

To load the completed spreadsheet go Menu: Students / Bulk Load.

For most Silent Dismissal clients, extended care tracking only applies to a subset of the entire student body. When using Silent Dismissal exclusively for extended care tracking each student must be designated as being tracked for extended care.

Go to Menu: Extended Care / Students

Click check box at top

Scroll to bottom then click Add Selected Students to After Care

In the future when adding students individually, the student may be designated as an extended care participant at the time the student record is created.

Menu: Groups / Extended Care::Extended Care

Click on Group Name

Click in third check box (All) for appropriate students

To aid in checking in students it is desirable to create separate Extended Care groups that represent each bulk arrival of students.

For example, a school bus may arrive from a single school with multiple students or a public bus may arrive with students from several schools. For this configuration item, two different groups are suggested, one for each arrival vehicle rather than one for each originating school.

Perform this operation as an administrator by navigating on the top menu to Groups / New.

On the New Group page, enter the information as follow:

1. Group Type: After Care
2. Group Name: provide a name that allows staff to easily identify the group of students such as Wild Oak Elementary or City Bus 913
3. Text Color: leave as black
4. Location: leave as – No Default Location –
5. Daily Cost: set the non discounted daily price for daily services; discounts are applied to the individual student records
6. Late Time: time of the day after which parents are charged an additional fee (per minute) for late pick up
7. Rate: amount charged per minute for students not picked up by the Late Time
8. Automatically Post: set the automatically post time for all days of the week to a time prior to students arriving. An appropriate time for this value for all days is 4:00 AM (04:00:00 for browsers that do not support formatted time input fields)

Click the Save button

Repeat these steps to create extended care groups for each separate arrival group.

If some students arrive on their own such as walking to the center then create a group for those students. If the number of students arriving in this manner is large, it may be desirable to create multiple walk in groups based upon an arbitrary student division such as last name, using group names like “Walk In A-J”, “Walk In K-P”, and “Walk In Q-Z”.

Each student must be assigned to an Origin Group facilitate easy check in for the student.

Origin group assignment may be performed by editing either the student record or origin group record.

Administrators may edit the student record by navigating to Menu: Students / List / <first letter of last name> / <last name> and classroom staff may edit student records by navigating to Menu: Students / Roster / <last name>

In either instance, the student assignment to an extended care group may be performed by clicking the third check box in the O/W/A column to assign the student to the group for all days.

Administrators may also assign multiple students to a single group by navigating to Menu: Groups / Extended Care::Extended Care / <group name>. This view displays all of the students. Assign a student to a group by by clicking the third check box in the O/W/A column to assign the student to the group for each day.

For Silent Dismissal clients that both dismiss students from school and subsequently check the students into extended care, the process of summoning students to extended care is integrated into the overall process.

For clients using Silent Dismissal exclusively for extended care tracking it is necessary to “dismiss” the students so that they can then be checked into extended care. Because each of the extended care origin groups was designated as having an automatic dismissal time, this procedure is relatively easy but must be performed each day prior to checking in the first student.

Sign in as Extended Care Administrator

Menu: Check Out

The underlying code on the “Check Out” page will automatically “dismiss” the students so that they may be checked into extended care.

Sign in as Extended Care Administrator

Menu: Check In

Select arriving group by name in top right

Click Check In for arriving students; click Clear for students not present (optional)