PowerSchool Parent Portal User Guide - PUC Schools

PowerSchool
Parent Portal User Guide

Table of Contents
Getting Started .....................................................................................................................................................1
Navigating the Parent Portal ............................................................................................................................... 2
Grades and Attendance ........................................................................................................................... 2
Grade History ........................................................................................................................................... 3
Attendance History .................................................................................................................................. 4
Email Notification .................................................................................................................................... 4
Teacher Comments .................................................................................................................................. 5
School Bulletin ......................................................................................................................................... 6
Class Registration .................................................................................................................................... 6
My Calendars ........................................................................................................................................... 6
School Information .................................................................................................................................. 7

Getting Started
Log In to PowerSchool Parent Portal
Before you can log in to the parent portal, you will need your school's PowerSchool URL, your confidential
username, and your password. The username and password must be entered exactly as provided to you by your
child’s school. Each username and password is unique to each student. If you have more than one child, you
will have different logins for each child.
Parents and guardians may access the system by going to: http://powerschool.pucschools.org/public
1. Open your web browser to your school's PowerSchool URL. The Log In page appears.
2. Enter your username in the first field.
3. Enter your password in the second field.
Note: The characters for your password appear as asterisks (*) to ensure greater security when you log in.
4. Click Sign In. The start page appears. The start page is defaulted to the Grades and Attendance page.
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Navigating the Parent Portal
Once you have logged in to the parent portal you can navigate to the various pages within the portal by selecting
an item from the menu on the left side of the screen.
Grades and Attendance
The Grades and Attendance page displays comprehensive information about a student’s grades and attendance
for the current term. The following information can be accessed from this page:
‣ Grades: To view grade details, click a grade in the term column
This will take you to the Class Score Detail page. This page will show you all of the assignments, due
dates, points possible and grades for the class.
To see a full description of each assignment, click on the assignment name and the Assignment
Description page appears. If you have questions about the posting of assignments, please contact the
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individual teachers about their policies and procedures. It is important for parents and guardians to be
familiar with the grading philosophy of their child’s teacher.
‣ Teacher E-mail: To send an e-mail to a teacher, click the name of the teacher.
Note: If you have an e-mail application such as Outlook or Entourage, you will be able to automatically
send an e-mail to a teacher just by clicking on their name. If you are using web-based mail such as
Yahoo or Hotmail, you will have to type the teacher’s e-mail address into your web e-mail. To see the
teacher’s e-mail address move your mouse over the teacher’s name, depending on which browser you
use it may appear in the lower left corner of the window.
‣ Attendance: To view the absences or tardies for the selected class during this term, click the number in
the Absences or Tardies column.
The Dates of Attendance page displays all absences or tardies for that class.
To view the absences or tardies for all classes during this term, click a number in the Attendance Totals
row. The Dates of Absences or Dates of Tardies page displays all absences or tardies. Use the browser
Back button to return to the Grades and Attendance page.
‣ Dropped Classes: To view attendance data for dropped classes, click Show dropped classes also, which
appears below the student’s GPA.
Grade History
The Grade History page displays the student’s grades for the previous term. Keep in mind that if the school has
not completed a term yet (in other words the first semester or trimester is not over yet) or if the school grades
based on year-long courses, there will be no grades displayed on this page yet.
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Attendance History
The Attendance History page displays information about a student’s attendance record for the current term. A
legend will appear at the bottom of the screen explaining the different letter codes used for attendance and
their meaning.
Email Notification
Through the Email Notification page you may elect to have updates sent at regular intervals by PowerSchool
through e-mail. You can manage what information you would like to receive, how often you would like to
receive the information, and add additional e-mail addresses that you would like the information sent to.
How to set up Email Notifications
1. Select one or more of the check boxes at the top of the page to indicate what information you would
like to receive.
Summary of current grades and attendance: Provides a summary of the grades in progress
and attendance totals for all classes for that student.
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Detailed reports showing all assignment scores for each class: Sends an e-mail for each
class with every assignment and scores. (Note: If your child has 6 classes you will receive 6
e-mails, one for each class.)
Detailed report of attendance: Sends an e-mail containing detailed attendance for each
class for the current term.
School Announcement: Provides the highlighted items/activities on the daily bulletin.
(Currently, not all of our schools are using the electronic daily bulletin system).
Balances: Our schools do not currently use PS to track student balances.
2. Select from the drop down menu how often you would like to receive these notifications. There are
five options available:
Never
Weekly
Every Two Weeks
Monthly
Daily
3. Select the check box next to the “Send now” option to receive the selected information immediately.
4. Enter the e-mail address where you would like notification sent to. You can enter additional email
addresses that you want the selected information to be sent to. Separate multiple addresses with
commas, but do not include any spaces.
5. Click Submit. A confirmation message appears indicating the changes were saved.
Teacher Comments
This page will show you any comments entered by the student’s teachers. This information is the same
information that would appear on a student’s report card. By default, the student’s schedule for the current
term appears. Use the pop-up menu to select a different term.
To view information for dropped classes click on “Show dropped classes also” at the bottom of the page.
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School Bulletins
This page will show you the School Bulletin. School Bulletins will include announcements, important dates and
other information. Below is a sample of a school bulleting.
Note: Not all of our schools have begun using the school bulletin.
Class Registration
This feature is not available for our schools. When you click on this page the following message will appear.
My Calendars
My Calendars is a tool to help parents and students stay on top of daily events and better manage their time.
My Calendars operates in conjunction with iCalendar, a personal desktop calendar application, whereby you can
subscribe to and receive information about class assignments, assignment scores, final grades and school
events.
Note: In order to use My Calendars, you must first have installed a personal desktop calendar application on
your computer that supports the ICalendar standard, such as iCAL for Macintosh, Windows Calendar for
Windows Vista or Microsoft Outlook.
Click on Subscribe and follow the instructions to open the application and manage the events on your computer.
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School Information
This page displays the name and contact information for your child’s school. If a school map has been uploaded
into the PS system you will be able to download it from this page.
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