Rotating Schedule Periods

Modified on Tue, Feb 27 at 3:14 PM

Rotating Schedule Periods

A bell schedule is used in Schools that have a rotating schedule.

A school may have a different bell schedule for each grade level. In addition, a school may use the bell schedule for some grades, and use traditional scheduling for other grades.

A school may also use a bell schedule on some meeting days, and not others.

The bell schedule feature does not explicitly need to be enabled or disabled.

The feature is automatically activated when a bell schedule for a given grade level and meeting day exists.

You can view your school's rotating periods via Scheduling>Setup>Rotating Periods.

Defining a bell schedule

A bell schedule is a set of bell periods. Bell periods can overlap; and are distinguished by the optional Alternate Bell Code.

A description of each element of the bell period is:

Field	Description
Bell Code	An identifier that is unique to this grade level and meeting day.
Alternate Bell Code	If two bell periods overlap – an alternate bell code can be optionally assigned. The subsection of the course that meets this bell period will have the same alternate bell code assigned to it.
Description	A friendly description of this bell period. The description is usually the scheduling period that meets this bell period.
From Time	The time at which this bell period starts.
Thru Time	The time at which this bell period ends.
Print Period	The scheduling period that meets at this bell period.
Lunch	This flag marks this bell period as a lunch. If a student is found to be in a course during this bell period; the student is assumed to be in lunch. If lunch appears in the student's schedule as course, then this feature should not be used. This feature is used in schools that assign lunch by the course/section/subsection instead of scheduling lunch as a course.
Seq	The order in which this bell period is displayed on reports and screens.

How Genesis locates a student

The logic Genesis uses for locating a student is as follows:

Look at the school calendar and determine the current meeting cycle for today. (for example A,B,C,D or M,T,W,R,F)
Looks at the attendance cycles of type semester to determine which semesters today is in (Q1,S1, FY etc..)
If a bell schedule does not exist for the student's current grade level and meeting cycle, the student's location is determined by comparing the Print Periods table to the Student's Schedule and the process would stop here.
Using the current time, identify the bell periods meet at this moment. If no bell periods meet at this moment, then the student cannot be located and the process would stop here.
The mapped print period and the alternate bell code are used to locate the class in the student's schedule. If the lunch flag is set on the bell period; then the student is assumed to be in lunch; and not that actual class.

Managing rotating periods

To manage bell schedules, navigate to the Scheduling > Setup > Rotating Periods screen.

From this screen, you can add, delete and modify the bell schedule for a given Grade and Meeting Cycle.

For convenience, you can copy the bell schedule from one grade and meeting cycle to another.

The copy button will clear the existing destination grade level and meeting cycle before copying.

FAQ

Q: Some teachers are getting a "Class Does Not Meet..." message in Gradebook. Why is that happening?

A: If your district uses Rotating Periods, make sure that the specific PERIOD attached to the course code the teacher is having issues with is set up and included on the Scheduling>Setup>Rotating Periods screen.

For example, if course English 1 is meeting on cycle day A - check the "print period" attached to the English 1 section via Scheduling>Sections>Modify Section. Let's say it is print period "1-2".

Check the Scheduling>Setup>Rotating Periods for cycle day A. In the "Print Period" column, is print period "1-2" actually selected for a bell code? If not, that is why the course does not technically "meet" on this day.

To resolve this, either add in print period "1-2" to a bell code on Scheduling>Setup>Rotating Periods or adjust the "print period" selection on the course section itself. Maybe it should actually be print period 1 instead, for example.