Family Management

Family Management as practiced by Valley Christian Schools. This does not pretend to be a prescription for "HOW IT SHOULD BE DONE", but rather simply shares how one school does it's best to manage families.

Introduction

Identifying related students and the ability to share data among those students is the goal of family management, which allows schools to enter student data once and share data among family members.

Learn more about Family Management Setup in PowerSchool by searching for "Family" in the Help area.

Once identified, shared data can be copied without additional data entry. Additionally, edited data can be dynamically updated for all students with the predetermined family relationship.

The Family Management function enables the district to:

• Control which student fields are copied from one student to another.
• Limit the scope of student records visible to a school administrator.
• Limit the scope of family associations to only those student records within the same school.

At Valley Christian we work to manage families by:

• Allowing district-wide scope for family associations.
• Adding all our custom guardian fields to the list of family management fields.
• Continue using the Family_Ident field still in the database but not used by the application.
• Diligently marking the youngest student as the "Family Representative".
• Annual review of family relationships when the family directory is published.
• Use of sqlReports to identify problem areas in family setup.
• Training and reviewing with secretaries how to link families on registration and how to update siblings when demographic changes are made.

Family_Ident field

The Family_Ident field exists as a legacy field in the database that is no longer used by the application. We've added it back to the "Modify Info" screen. It is key to our family management that every student from the same family shares the same family_ident value.

The following page fragment will add the family_ident field to the "Modify Info" screen along with a link to assign the next available Family ID when needed.

The file needs to be placed in admin/students

File (download and unzip)

Code

modifydata.familyid.content.footer.txt

<!-- create a hidden table with added rows, use jQuery to move the inserted rows to target table --> <table id="familyidhiddentable" style="display: none;"> <tr id="familyidrow"> <td class="bold">Family ID</td> <td><input type="text" id="familyidfield" name="[Students]Family_Ident" value=""> <a href="javascript:void(0)" id="usenextfamilyid"><strong>Copy next available Family ID: <span id="nextfamilyidval">~[tlist_sql;select max(family_ident)+1 from students]~(maxFamilyID;t)[/tlist_sql]</span></strong> </td> </tr> </table> <script> $j(function() { /* place the family id row at the beginning of the table */ $j("table:first").prepend($j("#familyidrow")); /* remove the hidden table */ $j("#familyidhiddentable").remove(); /* Function to add click listener to copy the next available ID */ $j("#usenextfamilyid").click(function() { if($j("#familyidfield").val() == "") { $j("#familyidfield").val( $j("#nextfamilyidval").html() ); } }); }); </script>

Family ID Screenshot

The family_ident field is a text field in the database. For the fragment to work, you need to make sure only integer values are stored. If you already have content in family_ident, review the contents and make corrections as needed. A useful search followed by a quick export can help: /family_ident#

Validation

To ensure the family_ident field remains integer values, we added a text mask:

• District - Data Validation Configuration - Text Mask Administration
  • Name: Numeric 5 digits
  • Validation Feedback Hint: Must be a 5-digit numerical value.
  • Format/Value: #####
• District - Data Validation Configuration - Data Validation Rule Status
  • Find the "STUDENTS FAMILY_IDENT" entry
  • Assign the "Numeric 5 digit" mask