Alternate Scheduler

Overview Notes About the Alternate Scheduler

1. The Alternate Scheduler program assigns a student to an alternate teacher for each class period in a semester or year. The student reports to an alternate teacher when the original teacher is absent.
2. The student has a regular “Class Schedule” and an “Alternate Schedule” to be used if a teacher on the regular schedule is absent.
   
3. The user should "Initialize" the Master Schedule load counts prior to running this program to ensure better teacher load balancing. The directions for "Initializing" a Master Schedule can be found by clicking on the link below:
   • Initializing the Master Schedule
4. The true master schedule load counts will NOT be changed, because the schedules created by this program do not affect the true WebPams scheduling system.
5. Only Master Schedule sections with a Max Seat Count greater than zero will be available for use in this program.
6. A complete alternate schedule will be created for all selected students. The program will read in all master schedule records. Each student will be assigned to a different teacher for each class period and semester.
7. Balancing the Alternate Teacher Loads:
   • The teacher the student will be scheduled to will be a different teacher than the teacher the student is currently scheduled to for the semester and class period. Priority is given to classes with the the lowest current load count for the semester and class period scheduling.
     1. The user should select the option to "allow overloads". Overloading the sections will ensure that all students are scheduled.
     2. If the master schedule contains some sections with low max values (max seats for the room), and "overload" is not used, the program may not be able to schedule all of the students to an alternate teacher because there may not be enough seats to schedule all of the students.
   • Overloading the sections will help balance the load for the teachers, allowing for more students to be alternately scheduled. The students will be better distributed to the sections with the overload option selected.
8. Master schedules which have only one section per class period, for a semester, for a teacher, will have better results running this program since the loads can be balanced for each teacher. If a teacher does have more than one class per period, then you may want to consider only sending alternates to one of the sections and indicate that the other sections do not receive alternate students.

Video How-to

Alternate Scheduler video

How-to:

• Note: The user should "Initialize" the Master Schedule load counts prior to running this program to ensure better teacher load balancing. The directions for "Initializing" a Master Schedule can be found by clicking on the link below:
  • Initializing the Master Schedule

Getting Started / Setup Box

1. In the left navigation panel of WebPams, click Scheduling, then Loaders, then Alternate Scheduler.
2. At the setup box, set the following fields:
   • Year: Year to create an alternate schedule
   • District: District number to create an alternate schedule
   • School(s): School number to create an alternate schedule
   • Grade(s): Student starting and ending grade range to create an alternate schedule
   • Active only: Select this box to schedule active students. Click inside the box provided to change the 'active as of date'.
   • Semesters: Click to select any combination of semester(s) to schedule. Only selected semesters will be scheduled.
   • Periods: Select which class period(s) to schedule.
   • Allow All Overloads: Select this option to overload the sections above the max value set in the sections. This will result in all of the students receiving an alternate teacher for the semester and class period.
     • If this is not selected, there is a good change that some students will not be alternately scheduled to a different teacher.
   • Replace ONLY Selected Stus Alt Sched: Select the option to delete the OLD alternate schedule only for the students selected. If you DO NOT select this option, the program will clear out ALL alternate schedules (ALL alternate schedules will be deleted) for all students for the selected year, district, and school.
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3. Click the Ok button. A "Continue with the following setup" dialog box will appear. Click "Yes" to continue, or "No" to cancel the process.

Running the Alternate Scheduler

1. After completing the setup box information, the master schedule selection screen will be presented. This is where the user will choose the criteria to run the Alternate Scheduler.
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2. Accept Stus column: Placing a check will allow the teacher/section to accept alternates. All columns are selected as a default to allow for ALL sections to accept students. You must “uncheck” sections that do not or cannot receive alternate students.
3. Lock Stus column: This selection is used to 'tell' the program which sections will keep students and not sent the students to alternate teachers. These sections will be skipped in the schedule selection process.
   • All columns are NOT selected as a default to allow for ALL sections in the original schedules to be alternately scheduled.
   • To avoid overloading teachers who have more than one section for the same semester, and class period, select only one of the sections, UNLESS you select to NOT overload the teachers.
     1. Ex: PE Teacher has PE II, PE III at the same period, only select one of the two classes.
     2. If the user selects to NOT overload the teachers, selecting all sections for the same class period for a teacher will help to schedule more students, while maintaining the max load criteria for a teacher's class period. If you select to use the section with the larger load count, the program will be able to better balance the load between the teachers.
4. Make sure to uncheck “Accept Stus” for classes such as Coord/Supv, Conference/Planning, etc... that should not get alternate students.
   • Classes with a large number of students (29-33) may need to be unchecked since there are large numbers on a daily basis.
     1. Just remember not to omit too many classes since the students are divided among the remainder of teachers.