Introduction
Parents are able to view student progress through PowerSchool, the school's student information system. PowerSchool is used to schedule, take attendance, store grades, produce transcripts, report cards and more. PowerSchool "brings together teachers, students, parents and administrators" in an easily used web-based data system.
Parent access to PowerSchool will be by unique login ID (Username) and password. For families with more than one child in the school, a separate parent username and password will be provided for access to each child's information. If you did not receive, or you lose your username and password, please contact Karen Brey at 402.785.2685, or send an email to kbrey@rcentral.org.
How to get to PowerSchool
Parents may access PowerSchool from the district's website located at http://www.rcentral.org. The PowerSchool button is located on the left side of the page. You will automatically see the screen below.
Step 1 - Enter your username and password. Be careful that you are entering the correct information. If your login contains an O or 0 (oh or zero) or a 1 or l (one or "eye"), it can be easy to enter the wrong letter. Notice that O's are wider than zeroes, and ones' and I's are different on the top. Also, please note that username and password are not case sensitive. Caps and lower case can be ignored.
Step 2 - You're in! PowerSchool is very easy to navigate once you are in the system. Your home page will look like this:
The first page you will see is the Grades and Attendance page. It displays the last two weeks attendance as well as the classes in which your student is currently enrolled and the current grade for the term. If you click on any of the "blue" links, you will be able to see additional information. Clicking on the letter grade in each class will provide you with a list of assignments, test, and quizzes that your son daughter has been assigned to do.
Clicking on a "blue" assignment link will give you further information about that assignment.
Clicking on the absence total will give you information regarding the day or period absence.
You can send a teacher an email by clicking on their name. This will launch your locally installed email client. The automatic Email notification is perhaps the most innovative and widely anticipated feature of PowerSchool's parent access module. This tool allows parents to select particular pieces of information to be send automatically via email to any valid user-specified email account. You may select what information you want to receive and how often you want to receive it. Type in your email address (separate multiple email addresses with a comma) and click on the Submit button.
Email Notifications
If you wish to receive information about your student's grades, attendance, and assignment scores, use this page to set up your e-mail preferences. You can specify which information you would like to receive, how often you would like to receive the information, and how often you would like to receive email.
How to Set Up Email Notifications
1. On the main menu, click Email Notification. The Email Notification page appears.
2. Use the following table to enter information in the fields:
| Field | Description |
| What information would you like to receive? |
Specify which information you would like to receive by selecting the appropriate checkboxes:
|
| How often? | Use the pop-up menu to specify how often you would like to receive the email messages selected above. |
| Send now? | Select the checkbox to immediately send the email messages selected above. |
| Email Address(es) | Enter the email addresses to which you want the system to send the email messages selected above. Separate multiple addresses with a comma. |
Final Important Points
Grades may be posted at any time during the quarter, but teachers will update their grades from the previous week by Friday at noon, with some caveats:
We hope you enjoy the access and the software as much as we already do!
Please be conscious of the fact that if a teacher gave a comprehensive test on Thursday, those tests may not be in Friday's entries. Grading a large number of extensive tests takes time, particularly if essay answers are involved. Please do not email them and ask when they will be graded; it just takes more of their time to have to respond to multiple inquiries!
Large projects, research papers, even multi-page essays will take several days or longer to grade with attention and accuracy. A teacher with 0 or more projects or papers turned in will not have those graded in 2-3 days, nor would you want them to grade them that quickly.
Grades may be posted at any time during the term, but teachers will update their grades from the previous week in PowerSchool every Friday by noon. Please keep in mind that teachers enter grades into PowerSchool differently. Assignments and scores are not always clearly defined for this reason. PowerSchool displays real-time viewing of teacher grade books at that time.
Attendance is updated daily.
If You Have Questions
About the site - Contact Jim Marsh at jmarsh@rcentral.org.
About a grade - Contact the teacher via the PowerSchool email link or call 785.2685 and leave a message.
About attendance - Contact Karen Brey at 785.2685 or kbrey@rcentral.org.
About a password - Contact Karen Brey at 785.2685 or kbrey@rcentral.org.