Starting a New School Year

Starting up a new school year in RCM isn't that difficult. The process is similar to what you have already done. By separating data into school years, it's easy to go back and access data from past years.


1. ARCHIVING LAST YEAR'S DATA (OPTIONAL)

If you haven’t created an archive of your report cards from last year, you can do so at anytime. The data for last year will always be in the system so you can get this data in SIMON at anytime.

Create PDFs of All Report Cards
  1. Login to SIMON
  2. Make sure you are on the desired school year. If you need to change the active year SIMON is pointing to, here's how.
  3. Click Print and the Print Report Cards dialog will open.
  4. Select the desired students you want to export.
  5. Check the Print to File check box to print your report cards to PDF files.
  6. Click Print.


2. ACTIVE SCHOOL YEAR

Make sure RCM is set to the new school year. You don't want to import this year's data into last year's data! You can update (or verify) the active school year with the Set School Year option.


3. ADMINISTRATORS

Like most data in RCM for the new school year, your Administrator accounts need to be reimported/recreated. You can do this manually, as an import, or there is an option to have SIMON carry over last year's administrators.

Heck Yeah, How Do I Carry Over Last Year's Admin Accounts?
  1. Login to SIMON using your Master Account login.
  2. Choose Utilities > Administrators > Manage Administrators.
  3. Click the Administrator Options button and select one of these options:
    • Import Specific Administrator From Last Year - Let's you choose a specific administrator to import.
    • Import All Administrators From Last Year - Pretty obvious, imports all administrators from last year.
    • Import All Administrators From Last Year of Type - Let's you select a specific type of administrator to import. All admins of the selected type will be imported.


4. IMPORT TEACHER AND STUDENT DATA

Import the teachers and students for the new school year. If you don't know how (or don't remember) here's how.

IMPORTANT! It is VERY important that student and teacher ID numbers remain constant from year to year. If the ID number changes, SIMON will not be able to track the student (and teacher) from year to year.
SIMON can import all teachers and/or students from last year. This generally applies if you have a single school, or hardly any teacher or student changes. For complete details on this process, see Importing Data From Last Year.

5. RCM PREFERENCES

The RCM Preferences will automatically carry over from year to year. You can review these settings if desired.


6. MY PARENT PORTAL

If your school is using the My Parent Portal option, you may want to adjust these settings for the new year. You can reset the users and import a new set of students and their parent eMail address. See the My Parent Portal section for details.


7. TEAM TEACHERS

Teachers change and so do students. So, you may need to adjust how your team teachers are setup. Even if the teachers didn't change, consider if your report cards did. If your report cards changed, you may need to adjust your Editable Fields.



With these steps reviewed and completed as necessary, you should now be ready to let your teachers know that RCM is ready for action!

If you have any questions or need assistance, please contact us. We're happy to help however we can.