Grant Wood AEA supports 255 private and parochial Iowa schools and over 80,000 Iowa PK-12 students with PowerSchool Premier and PowerTeacher Gradebook.  This support includes hardware hosting and support, training, consultation, and help desk services. A list of those schools and links to their websites are available by clicking on the

GWAEA PS Schools link on the left menu.

As winter blizzards cancel school days we need to be reminded how to handle snow days within PowerSchool.

First and foremost, DO NOT change the dates of your Years and Terms. Even if you have shifted your term dates to accommodate snow days do not change your years and terms. Call Grant Wood for help in resetting those dates.

You can however, modify your calendar to indicate which days were cancelled and which days will now become In Session days. To do this refer to Grant Wood AEA document  \PS 0712-07 Removing Snow Days and Entering Make up Days.pdf .

           End of Term Reminders     

With the transition into the third quarter of the school year and into new exploratory terms it is important to administrators to complete several end-of-term tasks.

Update the Current Grades - Update the current grade at Start Page > School Setup > Current Grade Display. This setting determines the current grade as seen in the Quick Lookup student screen, the Parent Portal, and more.

TIP: If you notice unexpected results in your current GPA on the Quick Lookup screen, you can usually address the issue by updating the current grade.

Store Grades Within 30 Days

Remember that administrators only have 30 days to store grades after the end of a particular scheduling term. If your school has any quarter-length classes, ensure that those grades are stored within 30 days of the end of the first quarter. If you have exploratory class you must remember to store them within 30 days of the end of that term.

Users of PowerSchool through Grant Wood AEA now have the ability to log into and use a new Behavior Management System.  This new BMS is fully integrated into PowerSchool so users can simply click on a link from the start page and go directly into the program.

The GWAEA Behavior Management System was designed with input from many different school districts and from the Agency's Regional Administrators, School Psychologists, School Social Workers, and others.  Grant Wood highly recommends your schools work with  Grant Wood AEA's professional staff to implement the Positive Behavior System, PBS, into your daily behavior management philosophy. 

Please contact Bob Neilly or Scott Benson to have the new Behavior Management System activated on your PowerSchool site and to help coordinate your inclusion of the PBS in your schools.

Enrollment Summary Graphs

You might not know that the Enrollment Summary page has some pretty cool charts that you can easily access.

Click on the Enrollment Summary then click on any of the blue title links along the title row on top or on the grade level column on the side.  A graph of enrollment by ethnicity or an enrollment by grade level will appear. This can be view both by individual school levels or by the district level for a complete summary graph of all your schools.

Keep Elementary Parents from Seeing Gradebook Details

If your elementary schools only want parents to login to PowerSchool to see attendance, bulletins, and teacher comments, but no grades from the grade book, simply do not fill out the Current Grade Display which is found under the Grading category under the school menu.

By leaving these settings blank the parent quick lookup screen shows only this week and last weeks attendance, email link to parents, and attendance totals. No grade book information is shown.

Sort Quick Lookup Screen

by Periods

An example Quick Lookup screen could show a listing like the following:

1. (A-F) English I

2. (A-F) Earth Science

3. (A,C,E) Fitness for Living

5. (A-F) Algebra I

6. (A-F) Lunch

3. (B,D,F) Photography

4. (B,D,F) Spanish

Gary Olsen, Cartoon College

Thinking about implementing standards grading for the 10-11 school year?

 Planning needs to start now.

The following links to the

GWAEA Standards Packet

have been developed to assist you on your path to implementing standards

There are several things you need to do to get PowerSchool setup for your parents to view their students' grades, attendance, teacher comments, and other information. Here is a starter list for you to consider. Click on each link to see documentation about each subject.

A.     Set all parents to receive weekly summary of grades and attendance. Click Here

B.     Set all parent and or students logins and passwords.  Click Here

C.     Using Quick Export of Student/Parent Logins and PWs to merge into documents you create for parent notification.       Click Here

D.     Send Parents form letter with login and passwords as well as instructions on using PowerSchool. Change this sample to your own settings.   Click Here for PDF or Click here for Word document

Before sending your letters to parents or finishing your web page with parent logon information please contact us and let us review your settings.

Telling Parents About the

Parent Portal

Typical methods used to let parents know about their ability to log into PowerSchool and view student progress include:

The goal of this site is to facilitate support for PowerSchool© in the most effective and efficient manner possible. Please refer to the information below to determine the best option for support issues.

Following Implementation

Following implementation, all support questions should go to your District PowerSchool© Administrator (DPSA), or your school's PowerSchool© contact person first. If these individuals are unable to provide support, you should pursue one of the following support options as appropriate.

Help Menu

Click on the question mark on each  PowerSchool© screen where the issue resides.

Training Guides

Use the training guides from the Teacher and Administrative training sessions for general reference on how-to processes.

Grant Wood AEA PowerSchool© Documentation

Use the documentation material on this site to research a possible resolution to your problem.

Grant Wood AEA Support

Grant Wood AEA provides telephone support, site visits, training and workshops, documentation, hardware hosting and system support.

If none of the previous support arms are available to a user they should call or email Grant Wood AEA PowerSchool support for help on their problem.

Release Notes

DPSAs should read release notes carefully and pass important details on to users in their district. The release notes are distributed via email to district.

Statewide and Mini User Groups

Administrators, secretarial staff and teachers are all invited to participate in the national and statewide user groups. The users groups provide support and information for PowerSchool© users on a regular basis. See link below for information on subscribing to these groups.

PowerSchool© users in Iowa have put together a very useful Users Group where they exchange ideas, comments, questions, reports, and organize their state Users Group meetings.  Grant Wood AEA participates in this Users Group and encourages you to sign up too.