Letter Criteria (Attendance)

Attendance > Maintenance > Letters > Print > Letter Criteria

This tab allows you to set criteria for printing attendance letters for parents/guardians.

When absence, truancy, or annual notification letters are generated, letter control records will be created for the students on Maintenance > Student > Student Inquiry > Letter Control. Letter controls are not generated for mailout letter types.

Best practices for attendance letters

Decide how you want to notify parents or guardians of a student’s absences from one of the following Letter Type options:
- Semester Absence: Generate letters based on the number of absences for a student per semester. Choose the maximum number of absences per letter. You can use prerequisite IDs for these letters so that the letters will print in the order you set up. Letter control is written to the students’ records.
- School Year Absence: Generate letters based on the number of absences for a student per school year. Choose the maximum number of absences per letter. You can use prerequisite IDs for these letters so that the letters will print in the order you set up. Letter control is written to the students’ records.
- Four-Week/Six-Month Truancy: Generate letters at three and ten absences. Letter control is written to the students’ records (amount of time since the last letter was generated is considered and then the number of absences).
Create all of the letters you will need at the beginning of the school year.
Select Select for Prt for all the letters you have created (except Mail out (no ltr control), which will print every time if selected).
Click Create Letter Control (which appears on Maintenance > Letters > Print > Letters once letters are generated) after printing annual notifications, truancy letters, or absence letters. Letter controls are used to prevent the same letters from generating for students who have already received them.

It is best to run the letters at least once a week. Running the letters at the end of the week, using the first school day of the week for the As of Date gives the students time to supply letters to excuse any unexcused absences.

There are two other Letter Types:

Annual Notification: Generate letters for all students at a campus one time. It will generate for new students even if it has already been generated for the rest of the campus. Set up multiple Annual Notifications each with a different Ltr ID. This letter should be used for non-attendance issues or single attendance notifications since it does not allow absence variables. Letter control is written to the students’ records.
Mail out (no ltr control): Generate letters for all students at a campus one time. This letter should be used for non-attendance issues, such as announcements, since it does not allow absence variables. No letter control is written to the students’ records.

Understanding Attendance Letters:

The program works by looking for Nbr Abs Req on Maintenance > Letters > Update > Directory and comparing it to the current total absences for the student.

If the current total absences is greater than the Nbr Abs Req for several letters with the same Letter Type, Absence Type, and Period Type, the letter with the closest Nbr Abs Req (that is not over the current total absences) will print. If Select for Prt is not selected, a letter is not printed.

The Select for Prt field does not control whether the letter is generated, only whether the letters, once generated, are printed. For this reason, it is recommended that you leave Select for Prt selected for all letters.

Update data:

Select for Prt

Select the letters to print.

• Multiple letters can be selected and processed at one time.

• If selected, the field remains selected so you can run the same letter again throughout the year without having to re-select the field; however, only letters that were not previously printed are generated. For example, if a letter with Nbr Abs Req=3 is printed for a student, that same letter will not be generated again.

• Truancy letters are generated according to the number of unexcused absences, so a student may receive multiple truancy letters.

• If you are using prerequisite IDs, it is recommended that you select all letters in the set of letters with prerequisite IDs to ensure that each student gets the appropriate letters.

• The field is disabled if a letter body does not exist for the letter type.

NOTE: This field does not control whether the letter is generated, only whether the letters, once generated, are printed. For this reason, it is recommended that you leave this field selected for all letters.

Semester

If a Semester Absence Letter Type is selected for printing, select a semester. Otherwise, the Semester field is not enabled.

NOTE: The beginning date is the first day of school or the first day of the semester, depending on the semester selected.

If you change semester, the As of Date field changes to a day within the semester, and a message is displayed indicating that the As of Date field was reset for the semester selected.

If you select a previous semester, the As of Date field changes to the last day of the last track in the semester.

As of Date

If a Four-Week Truancy, School Year Absence, Semester Absence, or Six-Month Truancy Letter Type is selected for printing, you can adjust the end of the reporting period. Type a date in the MMDDYYYY format, or click to select the date from a calendar. The field is only enabled if one of these Letter Type is selected for printing.

Truancy letters use the date in the As of Date field as the ending date of the reporting period. The letters calculate the beginning date as four weeks or six months before the date. The first day of school is the earliest date used for a beginning date.

School Year Absence and Semester Absence letters report from the beginning of the period to the date in the As of Date field.

The remaining fields display data as entered on Maintenance > Letters > Update > Directory.

❏ Click Run to generate the selected letters.

The Letters tab opens.

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