Set Attendance Backfill Preferences
Use Backfill to apportion attendance hours for Continuing Education (CE) students. Backfilling maximizes the number of attendance hours that can be claimed for state funding by taking excess hours from a school week and applying those hours to a prior week in which the maximum hours were not achieved. For example, if a student attends fewer than the maximum hours in Week 1 and more than the maximum hours in Week 2, PowerSchool apportions the excess hours from Week 2 to Week 1.
There is a maximum number of hours per week that can be used towards ADA funding; once this maximum is reached the state allows any additional hours to be used in previous weeks in which a student did not attend for the maximum. Hours can only be backfilled to previous weeks. Hours cannot be used for future weeks.
Once Backfill is enabled, by setting Attendance Backfill Preferences, Backfill functionality appears throughout PowerSchool, including:
Access to the Backfill Management page.
Certain aggregation necessary to support backfill will occur whenever attendance is recorded in the system
Three additional attendance categories, Unexcused Absences, Excused Absences, and Suspensions will be created, if they are not already existing, which are necessary to support backfill reports.
For further information about Attendance Backfill, see Help > System Help > Backfill Management.
Backfill Preferences
Navigation:
School Setup > Attendance: Attendance Tracking and Notification > Backfill Preferences
Data Element | Description | [Table]FieldName | Used in these Reports |
|---|---|---|---|
CA Continuation School Backfill Enabled | Select the checkbox to enable the Backfill. | [Prefs]Value=1 [Prefs]Name=ATT_BackfillOn | CE Reports |
Realtime Backfill Enabled | Check the box to enable Realtime Backfill. When Realtime Backfill is enabled, PowerSchool evaluates the backfill for a student each time attendance is recorded. PowerSchool will determine if there are excess attendance hours to be applied to prior weeks. Note: If real-time backfill is not enabled, the backfill must be manually processed using the Backfill Management function. For further information, see Help > System Help > Manage Backfill. | [Prefs]Value=1 [Prefs]Name=ATT_AutoBackfillOn | CE Reports |
Program to Backfill | Choose the special program set up for Continuation Education at the district. Note: CE reports use this field to identify which special program is used to enroll students in CE. Only attendance hours for courses/sections assigned this special program will count toward the backfill. | [Prefs]Value=[ID of special program] [Prefs]Name=ATT_BackfillProgram | CE Reports |
Target Hours per Day in Week | Enter the number of hours in the day that the student can claim for attendance. The default is 3 as required by the California Department of Education (CDE). The maximum number of hours claimable for a week is equal to the number of hours per day multiplied by the number of in session days in the week. Weeks that fall short of the maximum number of hours are eligible to receive backfill. | [Prefs]Value=3 [Prefs]Name=ATT_BackfillTargetHours | CE Hrly Att CE Mo Att |
Maximum Work Experience Hours per Day in Week | Enter the maximum number of attendance hours per week per student that can be awarded from work experience. The default is 2, as required by the CDE. | [Prefs]Value=2 [Prefs]Name=ATT_BackfillWExpHours | CE Hrly Att CE Mo Att |
Backfill Start Date (Required) | Enter the start date for the period to apply backfill. Per CDE, there are no limitations regarding how far back in the school year backfill hours can be applied As such, this date is typically set to the first in-session day of the current school year. | [Prefs]Value [Prefs]Name=ATT_BackfillStart | CE Hrly Att CE Mo Att |
Backfill End Date (none for current day) | Enter the end date for the period to apply the backfill. Per CDE, there are no limitations regarding how far back in the school year backfill hours can be applied. As such, this date can be left blank. | [Prefs]Value [Prefs]Name=ATT_BackfillEnd | CE Hrly Att CE Mo Att |