School Setup: Promoting Students

If you use the School Setup feature to manage your student rosters and enrollments, students will be promoted up one grade level at their school during the summer rollover process (which also involves archiving the recently-ended school year for historical reference). Contact Schoolrunner support to ensure the promotion happens on your ideal timeline; Schoolrunner support will make this happen for you!

Of course, there are situations where students are retained, skip a level, or change schools. Or all of the above! Read on to learn more about each situation and how to manage it.

Grade Levels

If a school only has grades 0-3 this school year, but will expand to grades 0-5 in the future, it's a good idea to ensure that your school is already set up with the maximum grade level it will have. This ensures that students are smoothly promoted each summer.

Once a student is promoted out of the maximum grade level (grade 12, in this example), s/he will move in to a "Graduated" school within Schoolrunner.

Retain or Skip Grade Levels

Remember, if a student should move up one grade level at the same school (as most students usually do), you don't have to do anything at all. This process happens automatically.

But if a student needs to be retained in his/her current grade level or should be promoted more than one grade level, you need to indicate this before the mid-summer promotion happens.

To set a next-grade override on an individual basis (again, not necessary if the student is being promoted up one grade level), edit the student record and look for "Override for Next Grade" in the "Attributes: School" section (in orange below). Select the grade level that s/he should be in for the next school year and save.

Change Schools

As with the "Override for Next Grade" field, you only need to use the "Override for Next School" if a student is not staying in the same school that s/he is currently in.

If a student is being promoted out of your top grade level (according to the "Max Grade Level" field on your school; see the first screenshot in this article) and moving out of your system entirely, you also do not need to do anything, as the student will be automatically moved into a "Graduated" school within Schoolrunner.

For example, if a grade 12 senior is graduating from your high school, you don't need to do anything. Or if a grade 5 student is graduating from your elementary school (and not moving into a middle school that you also have in Schoolrunner) you also don't need to do anything.

You only need to use the "Override for Next Grade" field when a student is switching between schools that exist in Schoolrunner. So if all of your 5th graders are leaving your elementary school and moving into your middle school, then you'll need to use this setting.

Another example: when a kid is moving up from Middle School to High School you will need to override both fields (input the first grade level of HS in the  "Override for Next Grade" field and input the name of the HS in the "Override for Next School field").

To set a next-school override on an individual basis, edit the student record and look for "Override for Next School" in the "Attributes: School" section (in blue above). Select the school that s/he should be in for the next school year.

Bulk Changes

If many students are being retained or, say, hundreds of 8th graders are moving from your middle school to your high school, you'll need a more efficient way to set overrides than by editing individual students.

To make bulk changes, use the spreadsheet upload from the School Setup "Students" tab. In this file, find the columns labelled "Sched_NextYearGrade" and "NextSchool".

To retain a student, or to indicate that a student should be promoted more than one grade level, enter integer values for the appropriate students in the "Sched_NextYearGrade" column. (I.E. enter 0 for kindergarten, 5 for fifth grade, etc.)

To ensure that a student moves to a new school, use the "NextSchool" column. Enter either the school_id (if you know it) or enter the school short name (highlighted in blue in the first screenshot in this article).

You can use these fields in conjunction with each other, to have a 7th grader in your middle school skip ahead to grade 9 in your high school, or to retain a grade 4 student but also simultaneously transfer him/her to a different elementary school.

Once you've appropriately configured all of your next-grade and next-school overrides, your work is done. Schoolrunner will use your work to update students as appropriate. If you have questions about when the mid-summer promotion will happen (and thus your deadline to make these changes), reach out to your School Happiness Coordinator or contact [e-mail].