Parent Resources for PowerSchool Portal
As a PowerSchool district, our student registration tools are accessible within the Student/Parent Portal. Such tools consist of accessing student information, email notifications, digital forms, and annual returning student re-enrollments.
The following instructions will guide new families on how to establish a user account, access and complete digital forms, and re-enroll their students.
New Student and Parent at OSPS? Let's Create a Parent Account for PowerSchool!
Creating a Parent Account through PowerSchool provides you with access to your student's schedule, attendance, grades, lunch balance, and more. The Parent Account is also required to complete the annual re-enrollment form to ensure our offices have the latest information to prepare for each school year.
Click here to go to the Parent Portal. Please note that forms and re-enrollment must be accessed via a desktop (preferred) or mobile web browser and is not available via the PowerSchool mobile app.
If you do not have an access account, you may select Create Account tab. To associate your students with your new account, please contact the main office of the school your student will be attending and request your student's Access ID and Access Password to complete your account. See below for registrar contacts.
New Parent Account Setup and Student Link
Once you have obtained your student's Access ID and Access Password from the main office, please follow the steps to link students on the initial parent account setup and to a pre-existing parent account. Please note that only parents and legal guardians of the student should be creating an account and requesting access information.
Input your contact information under Parent Account Details.
Document your Email, Username, and Password for future sign-ins.
Input your student's full name/as provided upon enrollment, Access ID and Access Password.
Up to seven students can be linked to your parent account during the initial setup.
Click Enter to submit the information.
Should you need assistance with recovering your username or resetting your password, please contact our registrars.
IMPORTANT: To ensure student data privacy, do not share your student's Access ID nor Access Passwords. Your Parent Account credentials should differ from your student's Access ID and Access Passwords. The Access credentials are only needed for linking students to parent accounts.
Student Link to Existing Parent Account
Students who have been successfully linked to your accounts will appear in the blue ribbon across the screen. If you do not see your student listed, proceed with the following instructions.
Sign into your PowerSchool Parent Account.
Click on Account Preferences towards the bottom of the left navigation menu.
Click on the Students tab and click Add.
Input your student's full name/as provided upon enrollment, Access ID and Access Password.
Click OK.
School Registrars
Kathleen E. Goodwin Registrar
Sheila Dunning
860-395-3165
Fax: 860-395-3360
Old Saybrook Middle School Registrar
Christina Healey
860-395-3168
Fax: 860-395-3350
Old Saybrook High School Registrars
Sheri Brinkley & Kristen Vanderveen
860 395-3175 860-395-3178
Fax: 860-395-3179
Setting up Email Notifications
If you would like to receive email notifications on attendance, grades, and balance alerts (breakfast and lunch funds), proceed with the following instructions.
Sign into your PowerSchool Parent Account.
Email Notification settings can be unique to each student. If you have more than one student linked, select the student's name from the blue ribbon.
Click on Email Notification from the left navigation menu.
Check the boxes of what information you would like to receive. Please note that grades and assignment scores will vary across schools and classroom which will yield different information when reviewing summaries and detailed reports.
You may add other email addresses to receive the selected reports.
Set the frequency and whether you would like to apply the settings to all of your students or if you would like the information to only be sent now.
Click Submit.
IMPORTANT: The emails will be generated from a PowerSchool donotreply email address and may end up in spam/junk folders depending on your email provider's settings.
Completing Returning Student Re-Enrollment Form
Once you have completed accessed your account, scroll down to the bottom of the left navigation panel and select Returning Student Re-Enrollment to proceed.
If you have multiple students in the district, you may repeat the process after submitting your first student's record by clicking on your other student's name at the header on the homescreen and selecting Returning Student Registration again.
If this is your first time registering your returning student with Old Saybrook Public Schools, check off the COPPA compliancy and select Begin Forms under New to PowerSchool Enrollment.
If you have completed returning student registrations with Old Saybrook Public Schools before, click on Sign In under Link your PowerSchool Enrollment Account and sign in using your PowerSchool Parent Portal credentials.
You will be asked for your student's date of birth as a form of authentication before arriving at the Returning Student form.
Managing Contact Information
Being able to reach parents and guardians is crucial to uphold the communication and safety of our school community. It is important that our offices have the latest phone numbers to be able to stay connected.
Parent/Guardian 1 should always be designated for the parent/guardian who is responsible for registering the student annual and serves as a primary guardian. Please do not skip and leave the greyed fields blank for this contact. This ensures that we have the latest information when updating your student's record into PowerSchool.
Please delete any emergency contacts who are no longer applicable. Once completed, you may sort them by priority in the event that we cannot reach student's immediate parents/guardians.
Changes to contact information during the school year can be made by contacting the main office of the school that your student is attending.
Our PowerSchool system allows for multiple fields to provide phone numbers. Please note that it is not required to have all fields populated if not applicable. We ask that parents and guardians avoid providing us with duplicate phone numbers i.e. providing the same number for home and cell. Duplications can cause issues under our system's Contacts page so please help us by only listing each phone number once per contact.
When removing old or duplicated phone numbers, be sure to clear all the Phone Type and fields under it so that Phone Number field is not required. If any of the fields under it are populated, the Phone Number field will expect to be filled.
Troubleshooting Inputting of Contact Information
When updating contact information, please review the First Name, Last Name, and Relationship to Student first as these fields are read-only and displayed as grey-out. The module does not allow edits to these fields so if any of these three fields are incorrect or incomplete for any contacts* we request that families select Remove Contact and resubmitting the contact's information in full.
Do not be concerned when selecting Remove Contact as it just clears the information in the form. Once you have added the contact back, contact information will be updated in PowerSchool.
For example, John Smith, a father of a student, is beginning re-enrollment and sees his current contact information stated as below:
First Name: John
Last Name:
Relationship to Student: Mother
Because John cannot input his last name nor adjust his relationship, John will select Remove Contact and re-submit his correct and up-to-date contact information for himself. Once submitted, John's information will be updated in PowerSchool and future registrations as:
First Name: John
Last Name: Smith
Relationship to Student: Father
Medical Information & Agreements
Please review and update any changes to your student's medical information. It is important that our nurses have the latest medical records which can be uploaded within the module.
Please review and update any changes to your student's FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) selection. Please note that there are three overarching options that allows families to either provide permission to release all Directory Information, allow specific Directory Information, or does not give permission to release any Directory Information. This is in place to reduce any contradictions of permissions.
Reviewing Summary & Submitting Registration
Families can save their progress and return to the form at a later time. Before exiting the form, click on the circular profile icon on the top right of the form's screen (with registering contact's initials) and select Save & Sign Out.
Once you have completed your student's registration form, you will be presented with a Summary page. Any red indicators under Status indicates that there is a field that requires attention under the specified page.
Select Find Invalid Fields to have the module take you through those fields to ensure that all contact information is inputted and valid. Some information such as phone numbers require a certain format which will be displayed in italics above the field.
Once all of your pages' statuses receive a green check mark, you may select Submit at the bottom of the screen. This will submit your student's records to our main offices for approval and delivery into PowerSchool.
Navigating & Completing Forms
Forms Overview
The Forms tab on the navigation panel provides digital forms for athletics, field trips, and other upcoming school initiatives.
General Forms lists forms that are available across the school year while Class Forms lists forms that are sent out by teachers for specific events or initiatives.
Series of required forms to be completed are grouped together in categories. As families complete forms, note the green progress meter across the header of each category. The progress meter will fill across the header to indicate when 100% of the forms have been completed.
Once forms are submitted, the form status will change from Empty to Pending. Once forms have been reviewed and approved, the form status will change to Form Approved. If there are issues with the form, it will receive a Form Not Approved or Form Rejected depending on the case. The form reviewer will contact families as to the reasons behind the non-approval or rejection.
Navigating a Form Series
When completing a form series, families are not restricted to completing each form in a specific order. Families can scroll through different forms above each form to see how many remaining forms there are and quickly jump to another form. Each form will indicate whether there have been previous responses submitted along with the latest status. Clicking on the last response status will allow families to review past form submissions.
Student & Parent Acknowledgements/Agreements on Forms
Note that forms may have different acknowledgement/agreement areas for completion. Such collaborative forms will be denoted with "Student & Parent" at the end of the form's title.
Parents/guardians will have access to all forms pertaining to permissions, there will be sections that require students to sign into their student PowerSchool account to submit their acknowledgement/agreement. Students can ask the main office of their school for their Web Access ID information to sign into PowerSchool if needed.
For example, the OSPS Athletics series requires both student and parent to acknowledge the athletic handbook, requirements, and consent forms. When a parent completes the form, they will only be able to acknowledge/agree as a parent as the student checkboxes is greyed out.
The student's form view will only grant them the ability to acknowledge/agree as a student with the parent checkboxes greyed out.
Saving & Submitting Forms
Each form will have a Save for Later button, allow families to return to in-progress forms at a later time. This will be useful for forms that require both student and parent to complete acknowledgement/agreement sections. Once the forms are completed, click on the Submit button for review.
The dropdown arrow next to the Submit form will allow families to submit and jump to another form in the series. If required items are not completed, the form will not submittable. Be sure to review all sections highlighted in red to identify what information is still needed to meet the form's requirements.
If families do not receive a status change on a form, they may contact the respective teacher for Class Forms for an update. For all OSPS Athletics forms, familes can contact our Athletics Director, Brendan Saunders.
