School Setup: Ending VS Deactivating Sections

When it's time to adjust student enrollments, the Edit Section page has a couple of options that can be confused. The "End Date" and "Deactivate" functions have important distinctions. See below for details and examples.

End Date

A student's section end date is when the student stops being part of the section. If you set an end date for a student's enrollment, Schoolrunner will still recognize and preserve the enrollment until that date.

A couple of examples of when you'd use the "End Date" field:

1. A student moves from Teacher A's section to Teacher B's section. Set the end date on the student's enrollment in Teacher A's section and create a new enrollment in Teacher B's section (and use the "Start Date" field in the new section).
2. A student stops taking a course after Q2 (or any grading term, really). Set the end date in all of his/her enrollments in that course so that Schoolrunner can preserve the fact that the student used to be enrolled but, going forward, isn't any longer.

By setting an end date, you're maintaining a past enrollment that is no longer current, but accurately reflects how things were in the past.

If you need to manage end dates or deactivate enrollments for many students in a single section, try out the .csv import to make things more efficient.

Deactivate

Deactivating an enrollment means that Schoolrunner will act like the enrollment never happened.

A couple of examples of when you'd use the "Deactivate" function:

1. A student was incorrectly enrolled in a section s/he shouldn't be in.
2. A student is moving sections and you don't need to preserve historical information (like what section s/he was part of on past assessments).

Although nothing is truly deleted in Schoolrunner, using the "Deactivate" function is like completely erasing a student's enrollment in the section.