Create Whole or Half Day Absences Type Letter

Tool Search: Attendance Letters

Attendance letters using the Whole or Half Day Absences Letter Type uses student attendance minutes that meet the entered weight to generate a letter. Whole Day and Half Day minute values are entered on the Calendar Information tool. This type is best for elementary schedules that use an AM/PM period setup.

Verify the correct School and Calendar is selected in the Campus toolbar.

Refer to the Attendance Letter Workflow when creating a letter.

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StepTask
1.Create an Attendance Letter.
Letter Criteria Screen
2.Name the attendance letter.
3.

Select the letter type, and determine if student can requalify for the letter.


Learn about the different letter types.


Learn about Letter Requalification.

4.Select the type of attendance (status/excuse or attendance codes).
5.Enter the status/excuse values or the attendance codes that trigger a letter.
6.

Enter a Weight value for each of the entered values or codes.


Learn about Weight values.

7.

Enter the number of events the student must have to receive a letter.


Learn about qualification criteria.

8.

Select the appropriate interval for the letter.


Learn about intervals.

9.

Select which Teachers and Sections to include in the letter.

11.If available, select which Sections to exclude from the letter (non-attendance taking courses, etc.).
Letter Format Screen
12.Write the letter in the designated Default Language.
13.

Write the same letter in additional languages that can be sent to parent/guardians who prefer to receive communications in that language.


Learn how to add preferred languages and create letters in another language.

Generate and Print Letters
14.Select the letter to generate from the Saved Letters list.
15.

If desired, select a previously-saved Ad hoc Filter that includes the students who should be receiving the letter.


Determine which operation to use when generating letters with an ad hoc filter.

16.Preview and Print letters.
17.Review the list of students that met the criteria of the letter, and remove their selection as needed.
18.Preview the letters prior to sending.
19.Print the letters.

Other Letter Types are available for selection. See the following table for a description of each letter type:

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Letter TypesDescriptionWhen to Use
Period Marks

This option looks only at the existence of an attendance event in a period for the student and provides a total number of periods in which a student has an attendance event. 

Attendance taken in the selected courses are not be used by the trigger calculation.


Choose this letter type to list the total number of periods in which there is an attendance event.


Use the By Course/Term Interval to include the total number of periods in which there is an attendance event for a specific course (requires courses to be selected in the editor). 


This is best for Block Schedules and for Modified Block Schedules.

Course Marks

This option looks at the existence of an attendance event in a course/section for the student. This option can be used for skinnied courses and for courses scheduled over multiple period schedules.

Choose this letter type to list the total number of a particular course is missed.


Use the By Term interval to include the total number of courses in which there is an attendance event for that term.

Whole/Half Day Absences

This option uses student attendance minutes that meet the entered weight to generate a letter. Whole Day and Half Day minute values are entered on the Calendar tool.


If a student is absent for the entire day, a count of 1 is included in the letter; if a student is absent for less than the entire day, a count of .5 is included in the letter.

Choose this letter type to list attendance events by the whole or half day.


Early Release events may alter the the totals for this letter.


This type is best for elementary schedules that use an AM/PM period setup.

Exact Day Absences

This option uses student attendance minutes that meet the entered weight to generate a letter, using the entered Student Day minute values on the Calendar tab.


If a student is absent for the entire day, a count of 1 is included in the letter.

Choose this letter type to list attendance events for the day.


This type is best for schools that only report attendance for a specific period, or only have one period in their schedule.

Single Day Count

This option looks for any student attendance record matching the selected status/excuse combination either by Year or by Term. If a student has one or more periods with an attendance entry, the day counts towards the total number of qualifying events for a letter.

Choose this letter type to list attendance events for the selected day.


This letter type includes attendance events with an excuse of unknown.

Absenteeism Level

This option uses the Attendance Aggregation Preference summary view options to determined whether a student is considered chronically absent.


When selected, an Absenteeism Mode field also needs to be selected. Choose from one of the four aggregation types - Federal, Exact, Exact Minute and Approximate. For more information on these modes, see the Attendance Aggregation Preferences article.

Choose this letter type to list a student's percentage of being absent. It does not rely on weights or intervals.

Enter Letter Criteria 

Selecting letter criteria is referenced in Steps 2-11 of the Attendance Letter Workflow.

  1. Select the New button. A criteria entry screen appears.
  2. Enter a Name for the letter.
  3. Determine if students can requalify for the letter. If yes, mark the Allow Letter Requalification checkbox.
  4. Enter Weight values for each Status/Excuse combination.
  5. Enter the total Qualification Criteria for Letter value in the provided text box.
  6. Choose the Interval to determine which attendance days will be counted. See the Intervals section for an explanation of each option.  
  7. If the letter interval is by Term or by Course/Term, and it should be made available for use at multiple schools in the district, and your chosen interval is by Term or by Course/Term, expand the Select terms for additional calendars option, and select the desired terms for each desired school.
  8. If the letter should be run for a particular group of Teachers or Sections, select the relevant groups. When a specific teacher is selected, the list of sections are only those for which the selected teacher is the primary teacher. Or, leave the Teacher selection at All Teachers and All Sections, which lists every possible teacher and section.
  9. Indicate where the letter should be Organized to.
  10. Click the Save button to save the letter. Click the Save and Continue button to enter the body of the letter. Both of these options do save the entered criteria.
  11. Continue to the Write the Body of the Letter procedures.

Whole/Half Day Letter Types can only be created using the Status/Excuse Attendance Type.

Screenshot of Whole/Half Day Absences Letter Editor Options.Whole/Half Day Absences Letter Editor Options

Write the Body of the Letter

 

Writing a letter is referenced in Steps 12-13 of the Attendance Letter Workflow.

See the Letter Format article for detailed information about entering the text of the attendance letter, including how to create letters in multiple languages.

  1. Enter the text of the letter using the editor.
    • To insert a data element from Campus (such as guardian name or other data) to complete a mail merge, select the Campus Field icon at the top right of the editor. NOTE: When including guardian names, choose the mailingAddress.guardianXXX options from the Campus Fields (within Student > Census > Mailing Addresses section).
    • To insert a pre-formatted table of information (such as an attendance summary), select the Campus Sub-Report icon at the top right of the editor.
  2. When finished, click Save Format. A letter may be saved to a user account (by having user account selected in the organized to) or shared with a user group. When the letter is saved, it will be available for future selection from the main page of the Attendance Letter Wizard.

For additional information about using Campus Fields and Sub-Reports see the Campus Field and Sub-Report Options section. To create letters in another language, see the Preferred Language Setup section.

This example uses the Whole/Half Day Summary Subreport.

Screenshot of Whole/Half Day Letter Format Editor.Whole/Half Day Letter Format Editor

Generate and Print Letters

 

Generating and Printing Letters is referenced in Steps 14-19 of the Attendance Letter Workflow.

Information in this report uses data stored in the AttendanceDayAggregation table. This means that attendance data for the current date is accurate as of the previous night's attendance calculation, or the last time the Attendance Aggregation Refresh was run. If needed, the Attendance Aggregation Refresh tool can be run to force an attendance recalculation to pull in the current day's data.

Without an Ad hoc Filter

  1. Select the letter to generate from the Saved Letters list.
  2. Click the Print and Preview Letters button. A list of students who met the criteria of the letter are listed.
  3. Review the list of students that met the criteria of the letter, and remove their selection as needed.
  4. Click the Preview button to review the letter format prior to printing.
  5. If satisfied with the format, click the Print Letters button, and select how to sort the letters and choose to record a PLP Contact record.

With an Ad hoc Filter

  1. Select the letter to generate from the Saved Letters list.
  2. Select the desired Ad hoc Filter.
  3. Click the Print and Preview Letters button. A list of students who met the criteria of the letter and the criteria of the Ad hoc Filter are listed. See the Attendance Letters and Ad hoc Filters section for more information.
  4. Review the list of students that met the criteria of the letter, and remove their selection as needed.
  5. Click the Preview button to review the letter format prior to printing.
  6. If satisfied with the format, click the Print Letters button, and select how to sort the letters and choose to record a PLP Contact record.

Screenshot of Whole/Half Day Absence Letter Print.Whole/Half Day Absence Letter Print