Monthly Mentions Newsletter – September 2023

The new school year is underway and we want to make sure it’s off to a great start! Reviewing your report cards is a very important step and should be completed during these first few weeks of school. This step involves looking over each grade level’s report cards to make sure all courses, sub-categories, grade scale and layouts look correct. When you complete this step early in the school year, you help support your teachers by making sure they have what they need and reduce last minute report card corrections at the end of the grading period. Please note that report card changes can take up to a week to process.

Here are the steps to view a report card:

1. Go to ‘Grades’
2. Choose a homeroom instructor in the ‘select instructor’ drop down then click the ‘view instructor’s grade book’ button
3. Click the button ‘view report cards’
4. When the homeroom roster appears, click ‘print’ next to any child’s name

Here are the components to review on a report card:

• Course names
• Course subcategories
• Grade scales/marking codes
• General formatting, for example school header, course list columns, layout

Click here to read the FAQ on how homeroom teachers can view their report cards!

Click here to read the FAQ on how administrators can view report cards!

All admin with Finance permissions now have the ability to make a charge to a family’s Tuition account. This will eliminate the need to make a negative deposit when you want to make a single charge to someone’s tuition account. This will be especially helpful when trying to zero out previous years’ tuition accounts for archiving purposes!

Charges to a tuition account can be made individually by selecting a specific parent at the top of the Finance page or as a batch in ‘Show All Families / Batch Receipts and Charges’

The school pictures that are taken of all the students each year can be uploaded to the school’s site and will be displayed when viewing the student’s information. Here are the two places where these school photos will be seen:

1. People>Students, then click on a student’s name. When the student’s information appears, there will also be that specific student’s school photo in the top right of his/her information.
2. Yellow Phone icon, which is displayed to the left of a student’s name and can be found in various parts of the system, such as Monitor, attendance/lunch rosters, GradeBooks etc.

There are two ways these images can be added to the system.

• Option #1 is to send the images to HelpDesk as a .zip file and HelpDesk can upload the files for you. This option requires that the files be named with the students’ ID numbers and are jpg files. For example, a student who has a FastDirect ID number of 123 then his file would be 123.jpg.
• Option #2 is for you to upload each image individually into each student’s account. If you choose this option, HelpDesk will need to remove the older files for the active students first. Please contact HelpDesk to let them know you would like to have the previous year’s images removed for all active students so that you can upload the new images.

When entering in grades in your grade book or report card, it is important to know how entering in letter/symbol grades vs. number grades can yield different results. When entering in grades in FastDirect (either in the grade book or in a report card), we recommend using number grades (instead of letter/symbol grades).  The reason why is because when the system calculates grades that have a letter/symbol, then the system must use the click percentage. The click percentage (or click value) is a numeric equivalent of a letter grade (ie. A=100; B=90).  The click % provides the system a way of calculating a letter grade by giving it an exact numeric value. Therefore, when a student receives a grade of a B+, the system needs to use the click % for that grade, which is specific to the grade scale that has been applied to that course.

Click here to see examples of letter vs. number discrepancies

These examples (in the link above) show how using click percentages will slightly change a student’s grade over time.  While the report card grade differences can be minimal, grade book grade differences can be substantial especially if there are many grade book event grades.

Parents can schedule automatic online payments in FDpay! If your school has activated FDpay, our electronic payments processing feature, then parents can set up and schedule automatic payments from either a credit/debit card or a bank account (ACH).

Click here to learn how to schedule automatic or recurring payments (for parents).

• How do I add a student or remove a student from a course?
• Can our lunch menu print the prices of items?
• How do I create a new Rate Program (in Timer)?

Helpful FAQs from September 2022:

• How are Progress Reports/Mid-term Reports handled in FastDirect?
• How can I create a Staff directory?
• Where do I find Attendance Reports from past years?
• What are the Grading Calc Options in my grade book?

Helpful FAQs from September 2021:

• Why can’t I make a lunch charge to a staff person’s account?
• How do I add the instructor’s name next to the course on a report card?
• What are my options for sharing my school’s newsletter?

Watch this video tutorial to find out how to Manage the Free and Reduced Lunch Programs:

• Click here to watch the video tutorial as an MP4!
• Click here to watch the video tutorial in YouTube!