Parent’s Guide to Home Access Center

Revised: August, 2014

North Penn School District Home Access Center TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 I.

How to Gain Access

II.

What Parents need to do now a. Updating Contact Information b. Online Emergency Information Forms

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III.

Home Screen

IV.

My Account

V.

Week View

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VI.

Schedule Page

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VII.

Classwork Page

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a. Special information for end-of-course grades

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VIII.

Interim Progress Reports

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IX.

Report Cards

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2

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North Penn School District Home Access Center How to gain access: Each summer, the passwords for Home Access Center are reset for security purposes. In late August, emails which contain the username and password are sent to the first and second guardian for each secondary student and the primary guardian for each elementary student. Guardians who do not have an email address listed will receive a letter in the U.S. Mail. Guardians whose email messages are returned as undeliverable will also receive a letter in the U.S. Mail. Secondary students are given their own Home Access Center account. Their username is their network logon (the one they use when they log on a computer in a North Penn school), and the initial password is their student-id#. Everyone is encouraged to change their password when they log on to Home Access Center for the first time. If you forget your password, there is a ‘Forgot my password’ link which will send your password to the email address on file in our Student Information System. Persons without an email address on file will complete the Home Access Center Request Form which can be found at www.npenn.org/homeaccess. These requests will be sent by U.S. Mail. Each secondary student will be issued an email address by the school district which can be utilized to retrieve their password. To access Home Access Center, open an internet browser, such as Internet Explorer Version 9 or higher , Firefox - latest 4 versions and then go to the following link: www.npenn.org/homeaccess What Parents need to do now: 1. Update your contact information – verify that your phone number and/or email address is correct. If you are listed as the first guardian for your student, you can update all of the contact(s) listed for your student. If you are not the first guardian, you can only update the contact information for yourself. 2. Complete an emergency information form for each student (only available to the first guardian for each student). On the emergency form, the order of guardians can be changed. So if the first guardian is not the one who would usually be updating student’s records, they can logon and specify someone else to be the first guardian. Only the first guardian can specify someone else to be the first guardian.

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North Penn School District Home Access Center UPDATING CONTACT INFORMATION: To update your phone and email contact information, click on the REGISTRATION icon at the top of the page, then choose DEMOGRAPHIC tab as shown below:

On the DEMOGRAPHICS tab, you can review information about your student, including the bus number (in the transportation section) and the homeroom teacher’s name in the first section of the form. To update insurance information or your phone number and/or email address, look for the section ‘Emergency’ or ‘Contacts’ and click EDIT The following screen will appear.

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North Penn School District Home Access Center

Type in any missing phone numbers and/or email addresses. You can type over any incorrect information. Click SAVE to submit your changes. NOTE: If the email address shown begins with the letters ‘INVALID-’, this indicates that we attempted to use the email address, but the email was returned as undeliverable. Please correct the email address, removing the word ‘INVALID-‘. Be sure to list one phone number on the line that says ‘Primary’ – this should be the phone number where you prefer to be contacted. ONLINE EMERGENCY INFORMATION CARDS: Each year, every student needs a new Emergency Information Card. Historically, these have been printed and sent home for parents to review and sign. If you have access to Home Access Center, you can submit the information online. From the Registration Link (as shown above), click on the UPDATE REGISTRATION tab

If you have submitted an online form before, you will see the form listed, such as the one listed above. You can VIEW a previous form, but not change it. To submit a form for the new year, click NEW.

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North Penn School District Home Access Center If you see the following message, just click continue. This can occur anytime the emergency form webpage is accessed more than once. This does not indicate an error.

The following screen will be displayed:

Click on all the + signs to fully view the form. There are four sections – Student Information, Contact Information, Additional Information, Grade-based Information and Documents. Student Information – this is for your review only. If any of the information needs to be changed (such as the address), please contact the building in which your student is enrolled. If you are the parent of a student in middle school or high school, you can see the student’s HAC logon and password. Please share this information with your student so they can have their own access to HAC. DO NOT give your username and password to your student.

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North Penn School District Home Access Center Contact Information – This lists the contacts currently shown for your student. You can change the priority of the contacts by using the arrows to adjust contacts up or down. The one on the top is the only one who can change student information and submit emergency information forms. Anytime you change a field on the page, the line will become bright yellow.

To change contact information, such as the address of the contact, click on the icon in the Edit/View column. You can add additional contacts, by clicking on the ADD CONTACT button. NOTE: ALL students should have 2 emergency contacts listed in addition to their guardians. The ADD CONTACT button will open the following screen. Fill in all pertinent information paying particular attention to PHONE NUMBER. Be sure to choose the proper contact type (Emergency is for the 2 emergency contacts). Click SAVE to save the contact information

Additional Information – Open this section to provide critical medical information about your student. The answers which were previously provided can be seen to the right of each question. You only need to answer those which are different than previously provided. A check-mark indicates an answer of YES. Click SAVE to save your answers.

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North Penn School District Home Access Center Grade-based Information: For ALL middle and high school students, the parent must agree to the three statements concerning certain policies. To view the policies, expand the Documents section and you can download the documents for review. ALL parents need to answer the ‘ambulance’ question and this is the only question that is visible for elementary school students.

Enter your name in the space provided to indicate your signature. Click SAVE to save your answers. If you wish to view the referenced documents, expand the DOCUMENTS section (below) and you can download the documents for your review.

When all sections have been completed and saved, click the ‘I agree’ checkbox. If you would like a printed copy of the form, click PRINT. Whether or not you print it, click SUBMIT to submit your form for the year. Until the form is SUBMITTED, it is not available to the school. When you submit, you may see the following dialog box:

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North Penn School District Home Access Center If you see this message, click OK. You will receive an email confirmation that the form has been submitted (provided that an email address is on file). When you look on Home Access Center (on the REGISTRATION page, UPDATE INFORMATION tab), you will see that the form has been submitted. When it has been processed, you will see that the status has changed to ACCEPTED. Until it is accepted, you can modify it if necessary by clicking EDIT. One it is accepted, a new form will have to be submitted if further changes are necessary.

To get back to the main Home Access Center site, look at the top of the browser, and you will see that the form opened in a second tab. Close the tab to get back to Home Access Center.

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North Penn School District Home Access Center This is the HOME screen for Home Access Center that is displayed for your student. If you are the guardian for more than one student, you will see the ‘CHANGE STUDENT’ button to allow you to select a different student. If you find that one of your students is not listed here, please email [email protected] and explain the problem. To view the records for a different student, click on the Change Student Button

Click on one of the circles to change your student and then click the Submit button

Home Access Center will contain different pages at different points in the school year. To access any of the following pages in Home Access Center, click on the corresponding link on the top navigational menu: Click on any of these links to display the respective page.

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North Penn School District Home Access Center My Account: My Account is the page where you will change your password. To access this page click on the name button in the upper right and choose My Account.

To change the password, enter the existing password (in the field ‘old password’), enter a new password which is at least 8 characters long, and then enter the password again on the line ‘confirm new password’. Then click the button ‘change password’. Then, create a challenge question and answer it. The purpose of the challenge question is an extra level of security. If you ask to have your password sent to you, the challenge question will be asked before you can log in. You will have to provide the answer exactly as you type it here before you will be allowed access to your account. Here are some common challenge questions: What is your mother’s maiden name? What city did you graduate high school? What city was your father born in? What was the name of your favorite childhood pet?

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North Penn School District Home Access Center Week View: The purpose of this screen is to provide a quick view of the school week. It contains summary items from other screens. It shows a schedule of the week’s classes and today’s header will be highlighted. North Penn secondary schools run on a 6-day cycle (days A,B,C,D,E,F). The schedule which is in effect today shows the classes which meet on the specified cycle day for the current marking period. The gray boxes indicate that the student does not have that class today. If the entire day is grayed-out that would indicate a holiday or non-school day. NOTE: Due to the complexities of the class-based attendance system used in the secondary schools, attendance is not currently shown on Home Access Center.

The SCHEDULE page (not available for elementary schools): Available from the CLASSES icon, Schedule tab, or from the HOME page, click VIEW FULL SCHEDULE.

This page will display the student’s complete schedule for all cycle days and all marking periods. You will notice that the teacher name is a hyperlink. If you wish to email the teacher, click on the teacher name and an email will open. NOTE: You must have email open on your computer in order for the email to send.

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North Penn School District Home Access Center

The CLASSWORK page – click on CLASSES icon, CLASSWORK tab or click on VIEW FULL SCHEDULE from the home page, then CLASSWORK tab. (not available for elementary schools): NOTE: At the top of the page is the Report Card Run (this one is set to 2) – this is the same thing as the marking period. You can change it to see past marking periods. There is also an option ALL RUNS – this will show all the classwork for the year; however, the Totals displayed are NOT MEANINGFUL for the North Penn grading scheme when you use this option. To see the year-end values, refer to the section below on ‘Special Information for the End of Course grade’. The classwork page serves 2 purposes: it gives advanced notice of assignments (as soon as the teacher publishes the information) and also reports the grades for the assignments, once the teacher publishes the grades. In the above example, the student is scheduled into six classes but only one teacher has published assignments at this point (this is obviously a test building and student). In the Astronomy course, the student received one grade on the Chapter 5 questions assignment which was due on 10/15/14. The student scored 10.00 out of 10.00 Total Points.

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North Penn School District Home Access Center On certain assignments, teachers may choose to issue letter grades instead of numeric grades. This table will explain how to interpret these grades. A+ This is equivalent to a numeric grade of 98 A B+ B C+ C D E F I N P X Z

This is equivalent to a numeric grade of 95 This is equivalent to a numeric grade of 88 This is equivalent to a numeric grade of 85 This is equivalent to a numeric grade of 78 This is equivalent to a numeric grade of 75 This is equivalent to a numeric grade of 65 This is equivalent to a numeric grade of 55 This is equivalent to a numeric grade of 50 Indicates incomplete Indicates an assignment which has been exempted Indicates a passing grade on a pass/fail assignment Indicates an exemption (same as N) Punitive zero. This indicates that the student received a zero on the assignment as punishment for some classroom infringement.

On 8/15/14, there is a Test scheduled. The description says Comprehensive test on Chapter one. It will be worth 25 points. To see more details about the assignment, click on the assignment name. The following is displayed:

Notice that this assignment has additional details listed in the description. The amount of detail that is entered on assignments is completely at the discretion of the teacher. Questions about classwork should always be addressed with the teacher.

Special information for the end-of-course grade: At North Penn School district, the final exam which is given at the end of a course is not included in the calculation of the marking period grade. It is a separate grade that does not belong to any marking period. When the classwork page displays, the course heading displays the marking period grade without the final exam.

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North Penn School District Home Access Center For example, a student may have a marking period average in Social Studies of 95% (as shown on the course heading line). In the course work, the final exam grade will also be visible, once the final exam has been taken and the scores published. Neither of these is his final grade in this class. To see the final grade, click on Grades button, then click the Report Card Tab. You can then click on the Grade and a window will open that displays how the grade was calculated.

Click the SHOW ALL AVERAGES button which is displayed to the right of the Classwork for the course. The following is displayed:

Here you can see the marking period grade, which agrees with the course header line on the classwork page, the final exam grade which agrees with the line item for the final exam, and the calculated grade for the course, which weighs together the marking periods and the final exam. This is the grade which will appear on the report card as the final course grade. For more information on how marking periods and exams are weighted, consult the Program of Studies which can be found on the district website. The INTERIM PROGRESS page: The interim progress page of HAC will turn on at noon on the day interim progress reports are issued (the school calendar displays these dates as they are set at the beginning of the year. Occasionally, snow days or other events will cause a change in the marking period dates. Such changes will be posted on the district webpage). Interim progress reports remain visible on HAC until the report cards are issued. This page displays each of the student’s courses and the marking period grade as it was calculated on the Tuesday before the interim report was issued. This is why you will sometimes see a difference in the marking period grade on the classwork page, and the value on the interim progress report – teachers make changes to grades and assignments every day and the classwork page is always the most current. The interim progress report is a snapshot of grades as they existed on the Tuesday before the interim report was issued. Questions concerning the interim progress report or its contents should always be referred to the building where your student attends classes.

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North Penn School District Home Access Center

The REPORT CARD page: The report card page of HAC will turn on at noon on the day report cards are issued (the school calendar displays these dates as they are set at the beginning of the year. Occasionally, snow days or other events will cause a change in the marking period dates. Such changes will be posted on the district webpage). Report cards remain visible on HAC until the interim progress reports are issued for the next marking period. This page displays the same information as the printed report card. It shows the marking period grade for each course along with comments selected by the teachers. A legend is printed at the bottom of the report card which explains the comment codes used on your student’s report card. Questions concerning the report card or its contents should always be referred to the building where your student attends classes.

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