A big part of being able to write specific check in and out data to Powerschool is auto calculating period and daily minutes. This will save you time by automatically calcualting minutes based off the school start and end times as well as individual class start and end times. This is crucial for accurate state reporting!
Lets show some examples of how this will look within Powerschool based off the attendance mode you are using.
With daily attendance generally you have a total minute count for the entire school day. For example, if your school day begins at 7:30am and ends at 2:30pm with a 30 minute lunch (that is not calculated) you would have a total of 420 minutes minus 30 min lunch = 390 instuctional minutes. Lets take a look at some examples
Lets take the school start and end times from above and assume a student comes in Tardy at 10:30am. Full day = 390 minutes minus 7:30am-10:30am = 180 absent minutes Equals 210 present minutes
A student leaves early at 1:30pm (after lunch) Full Day = 390 minutes 7:30am - 1:30pm = 360 total minutes minus the 30 minute lunch = 330 present minutes and 60 absent minutes.
With meeting or period attendance the school will have an overall start and end time for the day but will also have start and end times for each class period. Lets take another example to see how the minutes will be calculated.
School starts at 7:30am and ends at 2:30pm and each day consists of 4 class periods
Period 1 - 7:30am - 9:30am = 120 instructional minutes
Period 2 - 9:35am - 11:35am = 120 instructional minutes
Period 3 - 12:15pm - 2:15pm = 120 instuctional minutes
Period 4 - 2:15pm - 4:15pm = 120 instructional minutes
Total instructional minutes = 480 minutes
A student comes in Tardy at 10:30am. They have missed the entirety of period 1 and part of period 2. In this example, Period 1 present minutes for this student would be 0 and Period 2 present minutes would be the time from check-in (10:30am) to the class end time (11:35am) which is 65 present minutes.
A student leaves early at 1:30pm. This would cause the minutes for each period to be as follows:
Period 1 = 120 present minutes
Period 2 = 120 Present minutes
Period 3 = 45 present minutes (12:15pm - 1:30pm)
Period 4 = 0 present minutes
Total present minutes = 285 minutes
These are very basic examples of how the minutes would be calcualted based off of attendance mode and type of check in. You may have a more conplicated process or need other requirements. If you have any questions about minutes calcuation please reach out to our support team.