NERIC SchoolTool Team

July 2025 Newsletter

schooltool@neric.org (518) 862-5454 Opt.#2

Welcome to the 2025-2026 School Year!

AUTO GRADE ADVANCEMENT TRAININGS

Grade Advancement Trainings - SIGN UP!

We have several July trainings on Auto Grade Advancement (in-person ONLY). Please review the trainings notated at the bottom of this newsletter issue.

Pay close attention to the title as it describes the in-person location.

GRADEBOOK ANNOUNCEMENT

AUGUST 26TH: Mindex is deprecating legacy grading, and districts will only have access to the New Grading screens moving forward.

The deprecation of the legacy grading screens for ALL districts is scheduled for Tuesday, August 26th from 5-6pm.
- - This change will occur without any downtime.
All grading screens will be updated to the new default setting, Mindex-Selected New, and the ability to toggle this back to a legacy option will no longer be available within the front end of SchoolTool. Under extenuating circumstances, i.e. a critical bug with no available workaround, Mindex can reactivate legacy at the request of a RIC/district via a support ticket.
Please note that if users are utilizing the legacy grading screens at the time of this update, they will not be forcibly logged out. All data would be saved, however, once they navigate away from the legacy screen, they will no longer be able to get to the legacy screen (grade book). All data is still there, it will just be viewed in the new grade book interface.

Need more help or have additional questions? Reach out to your SchoolTool Liaison for additional assistance!

DISTRICT RESOURCES

Help Us, Help You!

HOW-TO: Leave Effective Message for Our Helpdesk

When reaching out to our helpdesk, a clear and concise voicemail or email can help us assist you more efficiently.

Here are a few reminders for leaving an effective message:

State Your Name and Contact Information:
Begin with your full name, school district, and a COMPLETE phone number with your extension, and/or email where you can be reached.
Be Specific:
Briefly describe the issue you’re experiencing, including any relevant details that can help us understand the situation (i.e. what Module you're working in).
Mention Urgency:
If your request is time-sensitive, please indicate that in your message.
Keep it Brief:
Aim for a message that is no longer than 30 seconds to ensure clarity.

THANK YOU for helping us serve you better!

July Clean Up Items

Faculty Member Accounts

Review your faculty module and address recent staff changes.

NEVER delete faculty records!

Three steps to inactivate faculty record are:

Inactivate
Remove the room number
On accounts tab, click disable current logins

Comment Bank Creation

Do you want a new comment bank for school year 2025-2026?

Contact support today with your request!

July Reminders

Schedule Offset Function Tip

Maintenance > Counseling

> Schedule Offset

Use the schedule offset field to tell the system when you plan to do your grade advancement or how many days past July 1 you are planning to complete the process.
Example: If you plan to do your grade advancement on July 8, enter an 8 in that field. When done with your grade advancement, return to this screen and enter a 0 in the offset field.

Summer School Classes

Summer School classes not showing up for teachers?

Check to make sure your schedule is locked.

Set Publish Dates (by building)

Maintenance > Scheduling

> Yearly Building School Level Options

Define the publish dates respective to when users will see the schedule.
Set your publish dates for EACH SEPARATE BUILDING.
- Top date field = When Student/Parent Portal info is visible
- Middle date field = When teachers will see their 25-26 schedules & rosters.
- Bottom date field = When teachers schedules will populate on the Schedule Tab in the Faculty Record.

Relates to Student/Parent Portal, Faculty Schedule Tab & Teachers' My Home View.

Annual vs. Continual Program Service Records

For Logging Annual Program Service Records:

Start Date: 7/1/XXXX

End Date: 6/30/XXXX

For Logging Continual Program Service Records:

Start Date: 7/1/XXXX (use applicable start date)

End Date: Leave this blank until the student stops receiving services or leaves the district.

July Holidays!

Friday, July 4th

Independence Day observed, NERIC offices closed.

Summer Review Items

Verify your SchoolTool Contacts

Please verify which staff members are to be included in our SchoolTool Outlook Directory.

Verify 3rd Party Extracts

We will be reviewing your current list of third party extracts.

We will ask the internal data privacy officer which extracts are to remain and which ones need to be disabled for the upcoming school year.

🪲Updated Features & Bug Fixes ⚒️

06/10/2025 Version 22.3-R2 (Build 12)

⚒️ Fixes 🛠️

Census: The Student Lite data warehouse export will report a code of 75 in Field 56 for P-Tech students whose address is associated with a County of "OTHER/OUT OF STATE".
Counseling: During Auto Grade Advancement, students will no longer be placed in inactive school levels when moving between buildings if the grade they are entering is included in multiple school levels within the selected building.
Counseling: The Counseling > Reports > Report Card Audit report will only list teachers who have not yet submitted marking period grades.
Counseling, Teacher: Configured rounding rules will be respected when calculating the final average for courses.
Discipline: Physical intervention reporting now properly reports restraint events for students who are not enrolled in district. In addition, logic has been updated to correctly report the intervention location code in accordance with NYS Data Warehouse reporting requirements.
Maintenance: The Assessment Fact Data Warehouse export has been updated to report the numeric score and standard achieved code for any assessments with an associated Major Life Event note.
Maintenance: The Student Lite Data Warehouse export will look at all available phone number rankings for the primary contact, rather than only looking at Home phone/Rank 1 phone, to ensure a valid phone number is included if available. The export will only return "000-000-0000" for students whose primary contact truly has no valid phone numbers in the system.
Maintenance: In the Enrollment Exit Reason list, code 071 has been updated to 0071 - Graduated and completed Extended Integrated HS Program Simultaneously.
Maintenance: School Entry Exit and Student Lite Data Warehouse exports will no longer include rows for alternate enrollments if the alternate enrollment record has an enrollment type that would be reportable for official enrollments (for example 0011 - Regular School Year Enrollment).
Maintenance: Corrected the School Entry Exit logic so that it no longer reports enrollment exit codes of 0065/0071 for students who do not have an appropriate P-Tech/Smart Scholar record, but do have a different "Other" program service type (students in this scenario who are graduated with either of those codes will be correctly reported with an exit code of 799).
Teacher: When using the Copy Grade Book Averages action on the Submit Marking Period Grades screen for Skill Sets, the average displayed will respect configured rounding rules.
Teacher: The Submit Employability Profiles Grades screen will only display profiles configured for the current school year.

📢 Features 🚨

Show Attendance on Grade Book Editor Students Tab: Students' course attendance summaries are available by clicking the attendance tally icon in the Students tab of the Grade Book Editor.
Auto-Tie Standards to Assignments: The Grade Book Editor has been updated to allow standards to be automatically associated with an assignment when adding a new assignment.
Google Classroom Enhancements for Assignment Imports and Score Updates: The Grade Book Editor and Grade Book Setup views have been updated to support expanded functionality for Google Classroom assignment imports and score updates.
Grade Book Report Update: Categories can now be excluded when running the Grade Book Report using the Reports button.
District Level Reporting for SSEC Offenses: To support NYS reporting requirements, SSEC offenses can be reported as district level instead of being tied to a specific building school level.
Discipline Updates to Support NYS Physical Intervention Reporting Requirements: In Maintenance > Discipline, the Offense Location area has been renamed to Incident Location and a new field has been added that allows you to designate locations as a Shared/Neutral space. In addition, the Maintenance > Export > NYS Data Warehouse > Student Restraint Event export has been updated to follow NYS requirements more closely.
New Permissions for Physical Interventions: New permissions have been added to give you the ability to control which users can view, or add/edit physical interventions
Major Life Events Exemption Reporting for Assessments: To support NYS reporting requirements for June 2025 and beyond, the Assessment Fact Data Warehouse export has been updated to report the numeric score and standard achieved code for any assessments with an associated Major Life Event assessment note.
County of Residence Field Update: The Student Lite data warehouse export will report a code of 75 in Field 56 for P-Tech students whose address is associated with a County of "OTHER/OUT OF STATE".
Enrollment Exit Reason Code Update: In the Enrollment Exit Reason list, code 071 has been updated to 0071 - Graduated and completed Extended Integrated HS Program Simultaneously.
Credential Type Updates: The names of the following Credential Types have been updated in the list available when exiting a P-Tech student with code 0065 or 0071.
- - 119 - Career Development & Occupational Studies Commencement Credential
  - 136 - Skills and Achievement Commencement
New Mindex Site Validation Service: A new Mindex Site Validation Service has been added to all SchoolTool sites to allow automated verification during release deployment health checks.
MTSS Edge Summary Report Viewer Updates: Updated the MTSS Edge URL field to support changes to URLs as part of MTSS migrations.
- - Note: Districts who configured the viewer in Maintenance > Application > Configuration Settings prior to the 22.3-R2 release may need to update the value entered in the URL field.