The beginning of any school year comes with quite a long list of to-dos. It’s overwhelming to figure out which logistics to tackle first. When it comes to the data you collect in our apps, we can help! Here are some of the tasks you can take care of right now in your PBISApps account. Trust us: Your future self will thank you!
PBIS Assessment To-Dos
It may not be time to take a survey right now, but that day is coming. You don’t have to wait to confirm your access, set up your survey schedule, or generate the reports you want to look at as a team.
Set Up Your Coordinator Access
If your school takes any survey in PBIS Assessment, you’ll need a designated coordinator. Your PBIS Assessment coordinator sends links to take surveys like the School Climate Survey (SCS), Feedback and Input Survey (FIS). They open survey windows for your team to take the Tiered Fidelity Inventory (TFI). Sometimes a coordinator is someone from your school district; other times it’s a member of your PBIS team. It’s also possible your school needs a new coordinator.
If your school needs a new coordinator, here’s what to do:
1. Download the PBISApps Local Coordinator Form
2. Fill out the form. It can be completed online or printed and filled out.
3. Email the completed form to accounts@pbisassessment.org or fax it to the number listed at the bottom of the form.
Create a Survey Schedule
If you’re like me, time will sneak up on you, it will be December before you know it, and you will have forgotten all about those surveys you meant to take. So, schedule them now in PBIS Assessment.
Aren’t sure where to start? We recommend at least taking the TFI [INSERT LINK: TFI PAGE] and the SCS [INSERT LINK: SCS PAGE]. The TFI helps you evaluate your implementation fidelity, and the SCS shares student, family, and staff feedback related to outcomes you want to achieve. All you have to do is decide when to take them and open the survey windows in PBIS Assessment.
Still have questions about creating a survey schedule and an evaluation plan? Register now for an upcoming webinar where we walk you through the steps to make your own.
Register Now!
Check Out Last Year’s Results
Speaking of action planning, did you make one at the end of last year? If you did, pull that plan out, remind yourself of what you accomplished and talk about how to build on that momentum in the new year. Those survey data still live in PBIS Assessment. Rerun those graphs and make some goals to work toward throughout the year.
SWIS Suite To-Dos
Summer break always seems to be just long enough to forget some of the systems, processes, and logins you used every day last year. Your referral process is not immune. When you get together to review your processes, procedures, and guidelines, add the SWIS Suite to your agenda and check out some of these to-dos.
Review SWIS School Settings
Our favorite ways to customize your SWIS Suite accounts happen through School Settings. Each of the settings is optional, but each one gives you one more way to make the application match your unique context. Some of the settings you can update include:
- School days: To generate the Average Referrals per Day per Month report, you’re going to need to enter this information and...
- School Enrollment: ...this information. Typically, these numbers come from your census, which might happen closer to October for some schools.
- Student Demographic Data: You can opt to collect information related to a student’s 504 status, race/ethnicity, English learner status, IEP status, gender, and district ID. Update the settings related to a few, some, or all the above!
- Person Import: We offer a few integration options to make data entry a little more efficient for you. Person Import is one of those options. If you want to streamline the process to update your student and staff rosters, you’ll want to enable this setting.
- Custom Fields: The 10 required fields associated with each referral you enter are the same 10 fields for every school using SWIS. If your team wants to collect additional information not available on the form, you can use custom fields to collect those data. If you’re new to SWIS, you might want to wait to set up custom fields until you know which data you want to collect.
- Referral Category Subtypes: Some categories in SWIS could be broken into subcategories. If your team wants to get more specific about the types of harassment, technology violations, weapons, or restorative practices happening in your building, enable these settings.
- Workflows: Ready to go paperless with your referral process? Enable this setting. When you turn on workflow settings, you enable staff members with the option to submit referrals online rather than using a paper form.
Update Those Rosters
Whether you need to archive last year’s graduates or add new staff members, updating your rosters in the SWIS Suite is a task everyone completes at the beginning of the year. When it’s just a couple of records to update, doing that manually is the easiest way to take care of those edits. At the beginning of the year, it’s more likely you have lots of records to update. You can do that quickly using Person Export and Import. Here’s how to update student records...the process is the same for staff:
- Enable Person Import in School Settings.
- Go back to the Tools menu and select Person Import.
- Click the Export Student List button to export your roster.
- Choose which students to include in your export. We recommend including both Active and Inactive students.
- Click Export.
- Open the file and start updating student information. If you have new students to add, enter their information in the appropriate columns.
- Save the file.
- Head back to Person Import and import the file you just saved.
Set Up Your CICO-SWIS Point Card Template
October is around the corner and that means we’re coming up on the “October Catch” — one of the earliest times of the year when referral data can help you identify students who would benefit from additional support. Why not set up point card templates now before you even enroll your first student?