001Uh my goal and role is to help ensure that as a district and as a community, you all have the tools to be successful when it comes to post-secary readiness and planning. So for the scope of today's training and for our um session this evening, uh we're going to focus on five key areas. The first being uh just a highle overview of what the course planning tool is within school links. And then I will kick it back over to Heather just to briefly talk about the timeline and the scope of students that will be using this particular feature. Uh then from there uh we will talk about the student experience. So uh if there's any students that are hovering over your shoulder at the moment or perhaps looking on your phone, they can kind of
002just get a quick glimpse of what their experience will be while in the course planner. Then from there, the important part, star of the show, is going to be how you as a parent and guardian can be involved in this course planning process from viewing the students course plans and signing off on a digital acknowledgement. Then from there, we always like to leave you with some support resources. So at the conclusion of our training today um I will share how you can get help and support directly in the platform and then time pending we'll open the floor and answer and respond to some of the Q&A. All right so starting off just very high level in terms of what is course planner? How are districts across the nation using this particular feature? Um, course planner
003is a student-driven multi-year tool that allows students to align their goals, their interests along with the courses that they're actually strategically planning. This is also a system that supports counselor workflows to ensure that students are in the appropriate or selecting or planning for the appropriate courses while also bringing in parents and guardians into the conversation in terms of viewing what students have selected. So for the student scope um we'll be using this tool this school. Sorry I'm going to start over. So for this school year we'll be using the tool for our current sixth graders through 11th graders. So our current sixth graders will plan for just seventh grade. Our current seventh graders will look towards eth and then 9th. And our current eighth graders will look for long-term planning of towards graduation. And similarly,
004a ninth grader through graduation, 10th through graduation, etc. Our current seniors are welcome to log in. The their historical course uh information will be in their course plan. Um so they can review the courses they've taken, but obviously they don't need to do academic planning. Um so they won't be using the tool in that way. In terms of our kind of timeline, the course planner feature goes live on January 5th. So on January 5th, uh students will be able to open this part of the platform uh and create their course plan. Each school and school counselor, school counseling teams are going to be working with students individually to build their academic plan. So the first piece is that students are going to work on their plan with a counselor. Um then they'll submit their plan.
005The counselor will review it, ensure they're meeting the requirements towards graduation. Then once that's completed, you as the parent or guardian will receive a notification that the plan is ready for you to review. It's really important that you're involved in this process, that you have a chance to understand your students long-term goals, um both educational goals and career goals. um and to be a part of this process. Um after that, we will use the students uh next year's courses in the plan to um start the course request process. Um so these two things will both kind of happen together um with the guid guidance from school counselors and of course with your involvement um to review the plan. >> All righty. So let's talk about how students access school links just as a quick refresher.
006Although many of them have already uh taken this first step. Um all students in Arlington public schools are able to access the platform through the my access portal. Um each student has a specific uh set of login credentials, username. They'll click go to be able to access school links. All right. So, uh first we're going to take a look at course planning uh from the student perspective. to get us started. Uh there's three major steps that happen when it comes to course planning in school links. The first is for students uh where available and depending on the specific grade level to select their specific program of study um so their CTE pathway or their endorsement and then from there uh they'll select the courses that satisfy each of the requirements. Then they'll submit for approval
007by their counselor. for students to access this particular feature. While logged into school links, they're going to go to our plan section and then navigate to course planner. Because this is a multi-year planning process, as in we want students to come back and revisit their plans year-over-year, make updates, and ensure that they're continually um going to be on track towards graduation and their uh post-secondary goals and long-term goals. Uh we do have the ability in the platform for students to go back in and view and access historical plans that they've created. With this being the first year that uh Arlington Public Schools is using this feature, um your students won't actually have a historical plan until next school year. All righty. So, with this, I'm going to switch into the platform just to highlight what
008the student experience will be. When a student logs into school links um and they access their dashboard, they're going to see a to-do schedule for later in the uh school year, that will become available in January uh for them to submit their course plan. Once this becomes available, students can click on a green button here on the right hand side to go to that particular feature. For the purposes of today's training or uh session, uh I will highlight uh what this looks like for the student experience. All right. So, when students first arrive within their course planning page, they're going to be met with a welcome page. This welcome page provides a guided experience that clearly indicates what needs to be worked on and the current status of the plan. So, here at the bottom,
009I can see which requirements I need to go ahead and start planning for. And for in uh anticipation of tonight's session, I have gone ahead and proactively planned some of my requirements. When a student first goes into this page, uh you'll notice a few icons here at the top and these are going to represent the different requirements that they're planning for. Anything that is red means that they have not satisfied or added in the appropriate courses for those requirements. We'll take a look at this more deeply here in a moment. All right, so to get started in the course planning process, I'm going to click on let's go on this blue button down here at the bottom. And in this environment, I'm currently a seventh grade student who is planning for 8th through 12th grade.
010So planning for 8th grade and my high school courses. The first step here would be to select my specific program for which I'm going to also plan my courses. If a student somewhere else in schooling, such as our district pathways page, has reviewed any of these particular programs and shown interest by clicking the favorite icon, uh that will be highlighted here on this page for them to review as they're going in to make their selections. All right. So, this case, I'm going to select my There we go. Let's scroll down just a little bit. select my sports medicine and athletic training. Then this will automatically update my course plan to include the requirements for that specific program. So in this example, I selected sports medicine. And so here at the top, I now have an
011additional requirement to plan for sports medicine. And we'll take a look at what that looks like here in a moment. to navigate to my first requirement that I need to plan for. In the top right hand corner, I'm going to click on the continue button. Now, as a student, what I'll need to do is go through step through each graduation requirement and the courses that um I need to add for each of the requirements. I can do so by clicking add another course at a at the bottom. As a student, I might not know specifically what I need to plan for for English. So, at the top, I'll have my English requirement. I'll have a description here that highlights what I need to plan for to satisfy this requirement. And if I click on view
012requirement details, it's going to show me the total amount of credits, courses, or any sub requirements that I need to plan for. So, in this example, as a seventh grader planning for 8th through 12th, I'll need to make sure that I add in my eighth grade course and then I'll um if I click on view requirement details, it'll show that I've satisfied my eighth grade English requirement. And what I would like you to do is continue to watch this requirements not met met section as I'm going through and planning. All right. So, I'm going to go ahead and add in my English course. English 10 for 10th grade. English 11 for 11th. And I'll go ahead and continue that same track. English 12 for 12th grade. All right. So now that I've planned these appropriate
013courses for each of my grade levels here at the very top, this bar has changed from red to green indicating that I have appropriately planned for my English requirement. If I also wanted to further take a look, I can always go back to view requirement details and I can see that I planned for the top level requirement of English and all the sub requirements within. Now, for your students, uh, as they're adding in courses into their course plan, they do have a filter here that, um, allows them to sort and view specific courses based on their subject area, um, or specific grade levels that those courses are assigned to to make their search for those courses even easier. To advance to the next requirement, we're going to click continue at the very top right hand
014corner. And then I would repeat that same process for each of my subject area requirements. Being mindful of the time that we have aotted today. Um I'm not going to plan for every single requirement, but I'll quickly click through so you can see what this looks like for uh history and social sciences for the math requirements, science requirements as I've added in these courses. world languages, health and physical education, and then fine arts or CTE. We have our economics and personal finance course requirements. All right. And then I'm going to take a quick moment of pause here. For our Virginia districts, we have what's called our sequential electives. These are specific electives or courses that have to be taken within a sequence or progression of um courses. And so within course planner, uh, if a
015student already has a course somewhere in their course plan that counts towards their sequential electives, then when I go here to add another course, I'll be able to see any courses that are in what we call progression, meaning they're already in my course plan. They count towards my sequential electives requirement. Here at the top, you may also have noticed that we have a section here that says view three credits not shown. This will then allow me as a student to see here are the courses that are counting or um lending themselves to the sequential electives requirement. And as I'm planning, I can continue to add the next course in that sequence or progression of courses. All right. And then next we have our sports medicine athletic training. If you'll recall from the very beginning when
016I first selected my program, I indicated that I was interested in sports medicine and athletic training. So when I get to this screen here and I make my selections, I can add the courses that appropriate appropriately satisfy this requirement. So for 11th grade, I'll go ahead and add in my uh sports medicine. And then for my senior year, I'll add in the training to course. All right. Our elective plate, our electives page uh does serve as a catchall. So if a student has not uh if they have any additional room in their course plan, this is where they can indicate any additional electives that they would want to take as a part of their planning process. All right. And then for your students, they have what's called our alternate courses. So this is only going
017to be available for next year's courses for the electives. And this is going to be in the event that my first choice of electives or courses are not currently available. Okay. So to add my alternates um under my next year's courses indicated by this orange column here I can select my options for my next year course or so sorry for my alternates. Okay. And then once I've appropriately planned at least three uh alternatives or backups for my elective choices, uh now here I'm able to see that I've met the requirements and that's going to allow me to now go to my summary page. All right. So, there is a lot of power and utility within the summary page. This shows an overview of the student's plan for graduation. This also will clearly indicate in red
018anywhere that we have not satisfied or met a requirement. And then basically the student's workflow from this process is for them to review their summary page. Um they can make edits and changes and then they will click the submit button in the bottom right hand corner. To highlight this point, I'm going to go back to my math requirement. And let's say I was rushing through and I forgot to plan my eighth grade math and my 9th grade math. Okay, when I get to my summary page, if I have not appropriately planned for each requirement, that entire row will be highlighted in red, indicating that I need to go back in and make sure that I have the appropriate courses for, in this case, my math requirement. As a student, if I needed more information about
019what I'm missing from this particular requirement, I can take my mouse and hover over this warning symbol and it will let me know that, hey, you're missing your eighth grade math and you have not fully satisfied the high school math requirement. So then, as a student, I can go back in to that guided workflow and add the appropriate courses. All right, just to quickly provide an example of what this would look like for other grade levels. If I was a sixth grade student planning for seventh, my dashboard is going to look just a little different. Um, so if you what you'll notice for your sixth grade students that are planning for seventh, um, rather than having several columns, they'll have a single column and they'll plan for each of those specific next year courses. The
020next year courses are highlighted in this orange color here at the very top. And for the electives, as students are making their selections for electives, each elective course will have a substitute or an alternate in case their primary option is not available. Okay. In the case of an eighth grade student or perhaps your 9th grade, 10th grade, or 11th grade students that are planning for next year, uh they're going to see a similar dashboard to what we just viewed live in the platform. But what we'll have is going to going to be this uh taken courses column. So if I was an eighth grade student and I'm going into course planner this school year for the first time, um what I will see here is a column for taken courses. to the courses that I've
021taken in the past or I'm currently sitting in this school year. And then I'll also plan for next year's courses as well as any future courses. All right. So, there are quite a few things that students can do from their summary page within course planner. Here we go. Um we mentioned earlier uh tying students planning to their goals and their interests. So because students are already establishing and creating goals while they're in school links. In the top right hand corner I can click on this trophy icon. I can see how my current planning aligns with the goals that I may have already set. In this very top row, I can also see in a quick glance which program I've already selected without having to go back to the program page. I can click anywhere on
022any of these rows to go back in and appropriately plan for a certain requirement. And we also within school links have what's called a drag and drop feature where as I'm planning we can kind of treat this more like a puzzle. And if I, let's say, um, wanted to plan my French courses to be a little bit later, um, if the course plan allows, I can click and drag to move my courses to the specific grade year in which I'm going to complete these courses. And if I plan for anything that is not currently approved, I will be uh, there'll be an indication here that lets me know that you'll need specific approval to have this particular course in this grade year. All right. Your students also have the ability to go in and view
023the changes that they've made to their course plan. And they can also download a PDF copy and save it to their computer or device or perhaps bring it home and share it with you uh as they have questions about their planning. The most important part for your students is down here in the bottom right hand corner to click the submit plan button. And when they click submit plan, we will highlight if there are currently any errors within their course planning process. From there, the student can choose to submit their plan with errors or they can go back through the guided workflow to fix their course plan. And then once I click submit as a student, the course plan is now ready for my counselor or a trusted staff member to go in and review to
024ensure the courses that I've selected and planned are aligned with the goals and graduation requirements that I'm planning for. All right. So, that covers the student side of course planner and generally what they'll have access to and how they'll be managing their course plans with the support of uh trusted counselors. But now, let's talk about you all as parents and guardians um and how you can access your schoolings account and help and support students with this process. First and foremost, to access your guardian account, uh your district has already sent and pre-created your accounts using information that's already been shared um with their student information system synergy. So, your accounts are already available and waiting on you. To get logged in for the very first time, uh you're going to go to app.schools.com and that's
025going to bring you to the login page to access the platform. for your very first time logging in. If you use or have a Google email address that's already on file with the district, you can select the login with Google option on the right hand side. If you use any other email client, then you'll need to do the forgot password option for your very first time logging in. This will allow you to set your own password to log into school links and will provide you with instructions on how to um reset or claim your password. Then your next time logging in, you can use your email and password or the login with Google options. All right. So now once you've gotten logged into the platform, I'm going to switch my environment here and show you
026how you're able to access your students course plan. All right, so once you get logged in, there are a couple of different ways to do the exact same task, and I will show you all three. First and foremost, once you get logged into school links, you will be able to have a um or see and view your specific dashboard. Um this is from the parent and guardian view within the platform. In the dropown in the center of the page, you can click on my students and then you're able to find your specific student that is currently course planning. And if you simply just wanted to view what the student has planned so far um prior to the actual acknowledgement process or signing off then while I'm in my uh particular student's view there's a case
027file section here where it shows currently to-dos and I can go here under the planning section and click on course plans. Under the course plan section, I'm able to view the plan and the sequence of courses that have currently been selected and added to the student's course plan and it's a mirror image of exactly what we saw on the student side. Okay. So, that's just to view the course plan. So, if you're curious to see what your students been planning, say, "Hey, I course planned today." And you wanted to go in from your account to see what that was, uh, you can go in that way. Now, as a reminder in terms of the key milestones, I know uh my colleague Heather has already kind of highlighted the workflow and how things operate in terms
028of the um course plan approval and acknowledgement, but the workflow is that students will submit their course plan, which is what we just saw. Then the counselor will work with the student and approve their course plan in schools. Then you will automatically as a parent and guardian receive an email notification and also a notification inside of schools letting you know that the course plan is ready for your acknowledgement your digital signature. So I know that as a parent myself uh you probably are receiving several different emails from different platforms and different things. Um, what you want to keep an eye out for in your email inbox is anything that comes from [email protected] because that is going to be something from the district or something from our platform relative to your student or action items that
029you would need to complete. In this specific example, um, you would get an email notification uh for the course plan acknowledgement. So, the email will look similar to this where the subject line will say your student's course plan acknowledgement is ready for your review. Um, it'll address you directly and then it'll let you know that there's action needed for you to review and acknowledge or approve the student's course plan. And there will be a highlighted hyperlink that you can click on that will take you directly to the course plan itself. Okay? So, when you click on that link in your email, it's going to take you to a page that looks just like this. And from this page, you'll see the student submission date, the date that the counselor went in and approved, and then
030you'll see here, this is where you come in where it's currently pending approval. So, under the academic plan section of the acknowledgement, you can click this hyperlink to go view the students uh course plan if you haven't done so already. And then down here at the bottom where it says approve plan, this is where you would type in your digital signature. And then from there you click approve. And now all three statuses are complete where the student has submitted, the counselor has approved and you as a parent and guardian have approved digitally. Okay. So that would be option one for getting directly to the course plan acknowledgement. Check your email, look for the [email protected] and then you can go in using this link and it will take you directly to where you need to go
031to sign up on that acknowledgement. Option one. For option two, you can um let's say you maybe have not received the email, maybe went to a spam folder and you're like, well, I just want to kind of see if we have this information yet. While logged into School Links in your parent and guardian portal, on the left hand side, you'll notice a list of to-dos. These are things for you to complete um or that need your attention. And so once the student has uh submitted, the counselor has approved the course plan, you'll see a task or a to-do to approve the student's course plan acknowledgement. And that's going to take you to that same page that we just viewed a second ago. So then there you type in your digital signature and you get to
032this page. Option two. All right. All right. And then the last one, option three, is uh if you don't see this to-do listed on your dashboard on the lefth hand side, if you go to my students and then find your particular student in the case file section, just below where you can view the specific course plan itself, you can go to where it says personalized plans. And this is where we house that section for you to sign off on that student's uh plan. Okay, so it'll be the course plan acknowledgement. You can click view plan and then sign off digitally. All right. So that covers the student side and what they experience. that also covers uh your role as a parent and or guardian of the student and how you can review the student's course
033plan and acknowledge that you've seen the plan, you've reviewed it with your student. And so the last thing I would want to leave you with before looking at some of the Q&A that perhaps has come in since I've started is uh how we offer support to you all as um part of our community using school links. Uh, first and foremost, no matter what page you're on, in the top right hand corner, you'll see this question mark icon. This is going to give you access to what's called our help center that gives you key information on how to use all of our important school links features. Um, and this would be specific to your role as a parent or guardian. In addition to our help center in the bottom right hand corner, we do have a
034chat icon and you can click on where it says ask a question and we have a builtin AI chatbot that can uh answer any questions that you have on, you know, how do I access my students plan? How do I sign off digitally? Um what does this mean if I'm looking at it in a course plan? All of that information you can take a look at and um get your questions answered using the AI chatbot. And if you're like me, you still prefer that uh human touch and human interaction, then uh you can always type in talk to a person. And then we do have a dedicated support team that's available during regular business hours to help and support with questions you may have. All righty. So that concludes my portion of the presentation before
035jumping over into Q&A. So, thank you so much for giving us some time this afternoon to walk through this amazing feature um prior to your students getting into um course planning in the spring. All right. Thank you so much, Michael. I have been um answering questions as we've go. There's I've gotten a little behind among them. Thank you all so much for your engagement um in this uh new tool and kind of learning. Uh we can probably go ahead and answer the rest out loud. Um so I will uh and I think at least one of them I need you to answer, Michael. >> Okay. >> So the first one, yeah, I'm going to uh question for the school system or maybe this is for our school. Will students and families also receive the list
036of available courses for [snorts] next year or will they have to search every course to see if it's available? Um, so this is the first year of our implementation of this tool. So we are uh doing our best to ensure that what is in school links is aligned with what is actually available at your student's school. So, for example, if your student goes to Wakefield High School, then as they're looking through the course, excuse me, creating their course plan, they're only going to see courses available at Wakefield. Um, I understand the request though to kind of have a different visual that kind of shows everything all at once. Some schools are choosing to still provide that and we may get enough feedback that it seems like people still want that and I think we could
037accommodate that. But for now, I'd ask you to reach out to your schools or to be on the lookout for those academic course planning uh info sessions at nights that your schools are scheduling um to see kind of how they're going to provide that information to you. Um okay, next. So this is a question from um Brolio um about email accounts. >> So does each email account on file for a guardian get logging information? Yes, every uh parent in in APS school district who has um provided an email address to the district um has their own login for uh school links. Now the second part I don't know how to answer. Michael is logging in. >> Yeah, I got you. Um so yeah, we just use the there's two components. We use the email address
038um to associate your account and then we use the single sign on authorization to validate that you are who you say you are so you can access school links for your student. Um everything else that you're doing in Google that is not being shared with us. We're not getting like your, you know, your email or anything like that. um mainly because we don't want it but also because uh that information is not what we need to get your account created. So it is just your email address um the actual physical email address and then the authorization um for you to be able to access the platform. >> Thank you. >> Um Mary asked, "Will the parents receive a course plan with things still needing correction or only when the student and counselor have worked things
039out?" Both. [snorts] Um students can submit a plan that um will be submitting plans likely that are still have not met all requirements. Um and that's okay. Um for example, we're asking our seventh graders only to plan out two years. So if they're only actually planning out 8th and 9th grade, then 10, 11, 12 will be unmet yet. And that's okay. This is just a plan. This is not set in stone. This is not guaranteeing courses. This is not um yeah, it's it's none of that. So, um, but we encourage, you know, you to look at this with your student if you can log in and to, um, see how they're doing. You know, once they submit it to their counselor, um, they'll have likely already met with the counselor and the counselor will be
040kind of checking in on some of those things that need correction. Um, you are welcome and encouraged to be a part of that conversation. Um, so encourage you to reach out to the school counselor about um, any concerns you have about the plan. and and once you see the plan, once you're then told, okay, it's your turn to look, that doesn't mean the conversation ends, and again, it doesn't mean things can't be changed. Um, there can always be there should be revisions and uh changes to the plan as the student progresses, as they learn more about themselves and their interests and how their courses should align with those. So, the idea is that students are reviewing these plans at least once a year um as they go through their academic journey. And one thing I'll
041also just add from the schooling's perspective um we put guard rails in place in working um consultatively con whatever the word is in working with uh the district. And so a a simple maybe oversimpli oversimplified example would be uh if a student's in course planning like they're not going to be able to select a math course to fulfill their English requirement like things like that. We put in specific guardrails in place. Then there's the warnings that we put on there for the students and then also the council review process and then also having you parents and guardians involved in this work um to make sure that that approval process goes well. Um so I can take the next one that I see here from Rolio. Uh does each guardian have to approve um or will
042it only require one? Uh our system only looks for a single parent and guardian signature. So um as parents and guardians have signed off um it will satisfy or meet the requirement um for tracking purposes. >> However um we can send links to two guardians to have two different approvals. So that that is that was an earlier question about um if there's two parents with educational rights that want to both be able to review and acknowledge a plan that's uh possible as well. >> Yes. And um the next question, what if we don't agree with the plan? Our child selected. I think I kind of um answered this a bit, but again the it's a plan. It can be changed. It is not a guaranteed set in stone course selection that your student is deciding
043for the next one, two, three, four, five years of their academic plan. So again, if there's um changes that you'd like to see, I encourage you to have that conversation with your student and the student school counselor and um changes can be made. Um similar question um about uh students wanting to encourage their student parents wanting to encourage a student to take a different course. Um that can happen. Um I did mention that the academic plan the students are creating. We are going to take next year's courses and use those to start the course request process. Again, we're starting the course request process with what they put in school links. that does not again doesn't guarantee those are the courses they're going to take. Um similarly when they would complete a paper CRF that also
044wasn't guaranteed right once um it wasn't until kind of later in August when schedules came out right but between March and August right a lot of times there are conversations that happen between families and students and counselors to make any changes that um the family feels need to be made. So again communicating with your student school counselor about those Should students so sorry I have me read out loud. Escar Juel says, "Should a student schedule an appointment with their school counselor once they've completed their course plan or will their counselors reach out to the individual students once they see the plan is completed in the system?" Um, technically on January 5th, a student could log in and create a plan before ever meeting with their school counselor. However, since this is a new tool, a
045whole new process that we're going through um for students, um we are going the school counseling teams are creating plans to go into classrooms and teach students how to use the tool and then meet individually to follow up with kids. Um so either could happen. A student could be super proactive and go and schedule a meeting or they could be waiting to kind of have that presentation and the counselor to kind of call them to meet with them individually. but also each school has their own kind of timeline of when this is going to happen um through January and February. So, just be on the lookout for more information from your school. In previous years, teachers would sign a sheet to approve a student's request for a class. How will that work this year? Is
046it integrated into school links? We um we some schools will be utilizing a teacher course recommendation tool within school links where a teacher could recommend a course and it shows up on a student's plan. Other schools are taking teacher recommendations differently. And again, this is year one of using this tool. So, we're kind of allowing for some flexibility based on what schools had already planned to do for this year. Um but absolutely teachers will be um involved with recommending courses for students whether that's verbally on paper in the system. They're a part of that process. Um and again a student might choose a math class in schoolings for next year and then come May there might come out a different recommendation from the student's math teacher to be in a different course for the following
047year. And that change will happen um afterwards not in school in school length. Um, so this is really just starting that plan process with them. Since this is a planning tool, Joseph says, "Since this is a planning tool and not a scheduling tool, then will the scheduling process be the current one at APS?" I I don't know if I fully understand the question. So, um, what I will what I can say is that in the past students would come home with a paper course request form and fill that out. That's not happening this year. So, that is a a big change um for this year, which is why we're trying to do our best to make sure everybody understands the new tool we're using. Um, in terms of your specific school and when they want
048the course plan to be completed and when they're going to meet with the counselor, again, I would look out for some communication from your school about that timeline. Yes, I answered that. Sorry, I'm just reading some questions. Yep. So, I'm seeing some themes. So, just want to reiterate, we've um pulled in all supplemental programs like the IB diploma and immersion and AP capstone and all those have been built into the system so students can plan through graduation and then see how does my course selection or excuse me, my course plan compare to um an IB diploma. Am I taking the right courses? You know, to be able to meet that requirements. All of those have been built into the system. This is not a scheduling tool. So it's not about um if a class is
049full or which teacher is teaching something. All of that's happening um outside of school links in a synergy where it always happens. So that's again so what a when a when a plan is approved in school links it's really it's not a guarantee they're taking those courses um it's that their plan towards graduation you know is is approved in terms of um you know meeting requirements or the next the next year looks good and then the actual schedule will come out much later for students It's was looking at the anonymous anonymous uh participant one. Um so you're anonymous. I can't say who you are but uh the ninth grader it says ninth grader never used school links before if he starts now and uh takes the plan and plans courses then it is available for
050spring 2026 or will it be available only for fall 2026? So the course planning window generally is students will do their planning in school links between I guess beginning of the school or not beginning of January time frame through March within whatever that window is. Um then there's a window of time and it'll be specific to your school and your district for the actual scheduling process. Whatever the students end up actually being scheduled into, that's going to come over to school links next year in the fall as your students current courses. So that way they can plan for or look at their plan for subsequent years. So um I hope that kind of like makes sense. So the the planning process is a defined window for planning. There's a scheduling window that happens with synergy.
051Then there's whatever actually gets scheduled and then the information comes over to school links for what the students actually are scheduled into and then we repeat this process next year around the same time. There's a question from Abby about if your child has or plans to apply to an option school that has a different um course availability course work and the lottery hasn't closed or that they haven't figured out if they've gotten into a different school. That's okay. Um, similarly, you know, in in the the old process, you would still create a course, complete a course request form at your current school based on right now where you know you will go the next year. And then if you get in to an a different option school, you would then, you know, go go and
052create a course plan for that school. So at that time, the student could go back into school links and create a different plan based on an entirely different school's course availability. >> Yes. Yep. And we'll retain the course any courses that transfer between both that might be offered at both campuses. So that way the student wouldn't have to start from scratch. They would start from here's what you planned. Here's where you're at now. Here's what you need to fill in that same welcome page that I showed before. >> Katherine asked, "Will this tool be used to process course change requests during the year?" No, that will happen the way it's always happened. Um, and I'm not going to speak to that process because I don't want to misspeak. What I can say is that um
053starting next year when a student logs into course planner, they'll be able to see the courses they're currently enrolled in for this school year as well as historical courses they've taken. So if a if a student is it's November next year and they change the course, the change will be reflected in school links for what are the courses they're currently taking. But the the request to change the actual changing of the schedule that all happens in synergy. You answered that one. We're getting down seven more. Okay. [laughter] Um so yes, schooling Scott. Um Scott asked schooling is just for planning purposes. The schools won't pull from it for formal class enrollment purposes. They will they will use the they will use it to start that process. Right? So if it they're going to pull in
054the the data that students say for next school year, the courses they're planning to start the scheduling process. Um that makes sense. >> Yeah. I was going to give a quick visual if that's okay. um of what is most important not for technically for scheduling but for the course requests um is as you're working with your students prioritize next year's course requests because that's what we use as a starting point for those course requests like this is what as a student I want to take next year um align with my goals and what I've talked to with my parents and my counselor um everything else in future courses that's really more of the planning process right so courses that I plan to take in the future to know that if I follow this path, then
055I'm going to be good to go for English. If I follow this path, I'm going to be good to go for a history and social sciences. But again, that starting point is for next year's courses. So, just as you're working with your students or your students are working in course planner, definitely keep an eye on next year's courses. Yes, I answered this um typing it, but I'll answer it again that any courses available at the career center to students at other schools will show up in a student's uh course plan that they can select those courses. So, that's yeah, that's in built within the system. Um uh someone asked, you know, sorry if I missed this. Do they also have to do course selection? Because we keep saying it's planning planning. Um, and we're saying
056planning because you you're you can plan through graduation, not just one year next. But there won't be a separate course selection process because we're going to use the work that the students and counselor and families are doing to on their plan. uh we're going to use that to start to pull the courses that the student planned for next year into a diff the synergy system to start as like the base for course selection. I hope I'm not going to get too in the weeds here, but I'm going to this might help a little bit to understand the plan in synergy I'm sorry the plan in schoolings is built around graduation requirements for a standard or advanced diploma. So, all students have to meet those requirements. No matter where you go to school, no matter what
057um types of courses you need, things like that. But the diploma doesn't, excuse me, the credits towards graduation. Um it doesn't matter whether you're taking, for example, an English language learner English class or an intensified English class. It's a credit of English. So that's why the system is just based on graduation credit requirements and not specific courses um that a student might need for special education, for English language, for virtual classes, things like that. So all of that happens in synergy. So the counselor will still be working on a student's course schedule after their plan is finished. So I hope that might help a little bit. And I don't know if I'm getting ahead of myself here just a little bit, but stop me if I am, Heather. Um, as students are going through their
058course plan for like graduation requirements, advanced diploma standard, um, down here under other options, uh, for your students, we do have other what we call a supplemental grad plan. so that as I'm planning for graduation and tracking against graduation, I can also see am I on track for these other requirements, AP, immersion program, uh, IB diploma. Um, so that way I can track against multiple requirements while still doing my course plan. And so if I clicked on any of these, it would show me like, okay, for Wakefield immersion, like what am I missing? Oh, I don't have my Spanish world language requirements. Like, what am I missing? Um, I can do that while also course planning at the same time without having to do a separate plan. Yeah, thanks for showing that, Michael. A lot
059of people were asking about that for IB IB um diploma. >> Sorry. And we're saying courses available to you at your school because um at the career center, for example, if you're a student in Arlington Tech, there's no AP courses available. So, you shouldn't see those in your academic plan. It's not an option. But any courses at the career center that a student at WL or Wakefield or Yorktown can take as an elective course is going to show up as something available to them um even though they go to Wakefield. That kind of thing. As for the timeline um of when these plans are going to be due, please look to your school um for those deadlines. Um I will I can say the whole process will you know of creating the plan will be
060finished by early March but some schools might have a February deadline. Um so it's a little it might be a little different school to school. So please look out for more information from your school for that. Um and yes plans can change plans will change after an approval. So approval just means like in this moment in time we're good with this right? But plans can absolutely change. Um, and a plan changing doesn't mean a course request change has happened. I think that's maybe the big difference, right? If you change something in your plan, it doesn't mean a student's schedule changed. Um, so that's that's pretty different. Okay. Yes, we keep talking about synergy, which might not mean anything to people. That is um that's a scheduling tool that parents don't need to do anything in
061the parent portion of that is called parent view. That's what um you see you're that's when you're able to actually see your students schedule for the next year. It shows up in parent view. But all that comes from this system called synergy. But you don't need to interact with that one. >> I saw the note about uh list of available courses. Um, Heather, would this be a good time to show them the course catalog in district pathways? Just >> I was going to say that. So, there so [laughter] not yet. So, there is a feature in school links. The feature does exist in the platform to show that. Um, but it we we need to have really clean data in order for the course catalog and school links to be accurate and we're working on
062that piece basically. So, as of now on the APS website, you have a program of studies. you can look at um for every middle and high school to see courses available at those schools. Um but I I would imagine in the future we will move towards towards using this this feature um so it's in one place. It makes a lot of sense to be able to look at it in one place. Um someone asked are parents welcome to join any of the students meetings with their counselors as they discuss academic planning? In theory, yes. Um, you know, I would talk with your student, talk with the school's counselor. Um, but we encourage parent involvement and guardian involvement in this process. Um, so yes, please reach out and join. [snorts] Some uh another anonymous, some courses
063require teacher recommendations or follow specific paths like math. students see the recommended courses or get the teacher recommendations requirement in school links. If a school is using the teacher recommendation course recommendation feature in school links, it would show up in a student's plan. Um, if they're going to use a different method to provide that recommendation, then they're they'll use a different method. But any courses that do require teacher recommendations will still have those teacher recommendations go to the student. Just how they get there would be a little different. This school to school and I think we're down to one and two minutes left. Great. So doctors asked, for example, if a student selected French for next school year and then after one year the student decided to take science instead, is that possible? Again, it's
064not a scheduling tool. Um, so my my guess to your answer, if I'm understanding correctly, is yes. The plan can change as long as as long as the student is meeting the requirements for a standard or advanced diploma when it comes to world languages and sciences. Yes. But please work with your student school counselor to ensure that you're um meeting the requirements. And lastly, if you say that data is correct in the tool, why not put in the catalog why delays? Well, for example, we have a schoolboard meeting tomorrow evening where the school board is going to vote on program of study changes. So, there are always changes every year to different courses that are available, course name changes that happen. Um, so this is kind of a fluid process. Um, prerequisites change sometimes. Sometimes
065the Virginia Department of Education comes out with new requirements and says this science course that's always counted as a science course now doesn't. Now it's only an elective in CTE. So there's just changes that are out of our control um that we are trying to keep up with and and [clears throat] get those changes made in the synergy system which would then impact schooling. So we will do our best um to move quickly. Okay, one minute to spare. Thank you all so much for your time and attention. I know that will was a lot of questions. We hope we found them valuable. Again, this is a learning curve for all of us. So, really appreciate your patience, your engagement, and your feedback throughout this. Um, School Links has really been phenomenal at changing features and
066updating things in the platform. As we've said, this doesn't quite work for our families and our students. Can it be this? and they've really accommodated. So, really excited to be partnering with them with this new tool. Um, and again, thank you all so much for your attention um this evening. Have a wonderful winter break. Thank you, Michael. >> Thank you all so much. Y'all have a good one.