What are the distinctions between homeroom groups and homeroom courses?

In Schoolrunner, homerooms/advisories (or whatever name your school has chosen for these student groups), generally sync in from your SIS. In PowerSchool, for example, there is a field that names the students in each advisory as its own advisory group. These student groups should not be confused with advisory courses and section enrollments. Some schools choose to create courses for advisories, and name the courses according to the advisory names. Advisory courses must be managed in your SIS.

If you want your advisory group to reflect student additions or removals, find the field in your SIS that names the students in each advisory group and edit there as needed. The updated group information will display in Schoolrunner directly following your next sync. Bear in mind that if you make changes to advisories from the student group page in Schoolrunner, those changes will not sync back to your SIS. All changes you want to see in your SIS must be made there.

Some SIS's do not sync advisory groups the way PowerSchool does. In these cases, we'll either provide you with an import page that will allow you to upload this information to the site yourself, or we'll help you create the homeroom groups you need. Contact your Schoolrunner administrator for more information about this.

If your advisory groups are created in this way, then the editing process is different: you will be able to edit straight from your Schoolrunner site, by going to the group's page. 

If you search for a group using Quick Search and click on the student group, you'll see a list of the students comprising that group, along with a change feed on the right-hand side, which allows you to keep track of all edits. 

If you'd like to edit group members at any time, you can simply scroll down and click on the dropdown menu that says "Add a New Student to This Group". From here, you can either choose a student from the list, or, start typing in a name.

When you've chosen your student, simply click on their name and you'll see them pop up on the list, which means they've been added to the group.

In order to remove a student from the group, just click on the orange X button to the left of their name, and they'll appear at the bottom of the list with a line through their name. To reactivate a student, you must first permanently remove them from the group, then re-add them.

Clicking on the "Edit" link next to the group name allows you to configure overall group details. Note that editing groups in this manner is only possible with homeroom students groups; it isn't possible to do this with dynamic groups made on the Groups page.

Note: Having accurate advisory groups is important in Schoolrunner. These groups are designed to display student membership on student pages, Scholar Dashboard, Analysis page, the Behaviors page, and elsewhere throughout the site. If your advisory groups don't have accurate membership, records may not be assigned to the students for which they're intended. Similarly, your Analysis page and Scholar Dashboard results may be skewed if groups don't have the correct membership.