Attendance Bridge

Attendance taken by teachers is always considered meeting attendance, so in order for teachers to be able to take daily attendance, meeting must be selected as an attendance recording method in addition to daily. PowerSchool is designed to convert meeting attendance taken in the bridge period to daily attendance, which accounts for the whole day.

PowerSchool allows one period per day to be marked as the Bridge Period.

Any Meeting Attendance taken (by a teacher, or administrator) in the Bridge Period is copied to Daily Attendance. This is an immediate process.

This is the only way that a teacher can submit Daily attendance without direct intervention by an Admin portal user (Such as an attendance secretary).

Setup: Attendance Preferences

1. Login to PowerSchool Admin
2. Select the desired school.  The setup is school specific.
3. School Management then Attendance and Attendance Preferences.
4. In Attendance recording methods, check both Meeting and Daily
5. For Meeting and Daily Attendance Bridge select one of the two options.
6. Save

One-way, section to daily attendance

Meeting attendance taken in the Bridge Period will be copied to Daily attendance, but not the other way around.

Two-way, keep records in sync

Meeting attendance taken in the Bridge Period will be copied to Daily attendance.  Daily attendance taken will be copied to Meeting attendance in the Bridge Period.

Setup: Bell Schedule

Any Bell Schedules which should use the Attendance Bridge need to have one period with "Use for Daily Attendance" checked.  This period will be the Bridge Period.

1. Login to PowerSchool Admin
2. Select the desired school.  The setup is school specific.
3. Navigate to: School Management then Scheduling and Bell Schedules.

4. Click Edit Schedule Select the Period that you want to use as the bridge period.

                 *This should be one that every student is enrolled in.

5. Click "Use for Daily Attendance"
6. Set the default time in to the start of the school day bell schedule, e.g. 8:30am
7. Set the default time out to the end of the school day bell schedule, e.g. 3:30pm
8. Submit

*Look for the green check mark to indicate the Bridge Period has been set.

Setup: Attendance Synchronization

1. Attendance then Recalculate Daily Attendance Minutes.
2. This will recalculate a. the minutes to the first of the year

Setup: Attendance Bridge Synchronization

NOTE: This procedure may only be performed at the school level.

1. Attendance then Attendance Bridge Synchronization

2. Select the Direction to re‐build bridge:

    a. Choose From Meeting, build Daily to create a daily attendance record for each meeting
         attendance record that exists for the calendar day's bridge period.

   3.Select Other Preferences:

  a. If daily attendance code is absent, mark all periods absent for the day to create a meeting                 attendance record for each period in the bell schedule.

  b. If daily attendance code is absent, mark only the bridge period absent for the day to create a meeting attendance record for the bridge period identified in the bell schedule.

Note:

The attendance bridge is typically used in schools where attendance is taken in a single "homeroom" period but reported on day-to-day rather than period-to-period.