Preparing for Summer School

This article contains the following:
1. Overview
2. If you choose to pause your SIS data sync
3. If you choose not to pause your SIS data sync
4. Frequently Asked Questions

Overview

Clever can support your district in multiple ways during summer school, each with its own benefits and possible limitations. We recommend thinking through these guiding questions to help you to make informed decisions about the best summer school options for your district:

• Who will specifically need access to Clever and connected learning applications over the summer? (e.g. all students and teachers, only a subset of users, etc.)
• Which Clever resources do district users need to access or utilize over the summer?
• Will your district need to add new users over the summer, or before the start of the new school year?
• Will data need to be dynamically updated in Clever via your student information system (SIS) sync, or will a district admin be managing the manual summer school updates in Clever?

Please review the rest of this article to learn of the options available to you depending on your district's needs during the summer months! For specific details about school year rollover, please visit this article.

Did you know? By default, Clever schedules a SIS sync pause for all districts beginning two days before your last day of school, and resuming two weeks before the start of school. We know school year schedules vary, so we encourage you to customize your pause dates! Please visit this article for details.

If you choose to pause your SIS data sync

By default, Clever schedules a pause for all district SIS syncs beginning two days before the last day of school, and resuming two weeks before the start of the new school year. During the pause, Clever will stop processing updates allowing districts to make changes to their SIS data without interrupting student or teacher access to Clever or their connected applications over the summer. Current school year data will essentially be "frozen" in Clever for the duration of the district's sync pause.   

We recommend using this option if:

• Your district won't need to update summer rosters often and/or there are minimal changes that need to be made in Clever over the summer.
• District users need to access to their connected applications and associated data from the previous school year over the summer (e.g. students who need to complete summer homework in apps).

This option allows:

• District admins to continue adding rostering data to Clever during the sync pause via Clever's custom data feature. This feature is useful for creating sections for summer school, intervention groups, after-school programs, and more! 
  • Custom data provides a way to enter data directly into Clever bypassing the sync from your SIS. Custom data will not overwrite any SIS rostering data being synced to Clever when the sync pause is removed, nor can it be overwritten by your SIS synced data. Visit this article for details!
• District admins to make updates in the district's SIS without those changes updating Clever for the duration of the sync pause.
• District admins to continue adjusting application sharing permissions for district-wide apps.
• District users to continue logging in to Clever, and connected applications, to access their data from the previous school year.

If your district is moving forward with initiating a sync pause, please see this article for instructions.

Please note: Districts can still update sharing permissions for applications when their SIS sync is on pause for the summer.

If you choose not to pause your SIS data sync

If your district prefers to continue syncing SIS data to Clever over the summer, the first step is to remove the sync 'Pause Start Date' and 'Pause End Date' from your district dashboard > Sync > Settings page. This way, the daily syncs from your SIS will continue. 

District admins will still be able to utilize the custom data feature in Clever to add any additional rostering data not being synced to Clever. 

Please visit this article for additional details about data sync pauses.

We recommend using this option if:

• Your users need access to their resources and learning applications over the summer, but not necessarily the previous year/semester's data.
• You anticipate that new students entering your district over the summer will need access to Clever before the new school year, and would like their SIS record synced to Clever rather than creating their record via custom data.
• Your summer school data changes often in your SIS, and you would like a more automated process for updating Clever.

This option allows:

• District admins to create and manage custom rostering data in Clever.
• District admins to continue adjusting application sharing permissions for district-wide apps.
• Your district's SIS to continue dynamically updating Clever with ongoing rostering updates daily.
• New students, teachers, sections and staff to be added to Clever via the SIS sync, and this data will continue to be synced to connected applications.
  • Please note: Some application(s) stop syncing to Clever over the summer. Please reach out to the app partner(s) directly to understand their summer rollover process.

Important things to consider:

• Access for students and teachers between school years may be impacted as the data in Clever is updated over the summer via the SIS sync. Therefore, the content that is available to them in their applications, or their ability to access applications, might change.
  • For example:
    • If a student's grade is updated from 4 to 5, depending on the application, they may no longer have access to their 4th grade data.
    • A teacher may not be able to access their rosters from the previous school year.

For more detailed information about how this might affect your connected applications, please reach out to the app support teams directly.

 Important Alert! If you do not pause your SIS data sync over the summer, any new rostering data in your SIS will replace the previous school year's data in Clever. This means that students and teachers who are not attending summer school may lose access to Clever and their connected applications over the summer!

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about summer school and school year rollover:

Can we pause data syncs to specific applications?

• No, while some applications implement their own sync pauses to Clever over the summer, there is no Clever setting that allows district admins to determine which apps sync and which apps don't.
• The SIS sync pause in Clever essentially freezes all data in Clever, so the data synced to all connected applications will remain the same over the summer if your SIS sync is paused.
• We recommend reaching out to the app support team(s) directly for information about their sync pause process, or pausing sync pauses to their individual app(s).

Do Badges expire?

• Because of this year's unique circumstances, Badges won't expire once a district unpauses their SIS sync. Badges will remain active unless the district chooses to void them. If the district would like to void and reprint Badges for the new school year, this can easily be done by navigating to the District Dashboard > Badges page.

How is the primary school of a user determined? 

• By default, Clever assigns users' primary schools where the majority of their sections are located. This means that if a student is enrolled in 3 sections at School A and 5 sections at School B, their primary school will be School B in Clever (regardless of which school the student is assigned to in your SIS). For teachers, Clever looks at which school they teach the most sections.
• Visit this article for more details. 

What if we are switching our district's SIS, sync type, or SIS ID's over the summer?

• Please contact Clever support if you are planning on changing any of this information! We highly encourage districts to not change SIS ID's for data types (excluding sections) because historical data is tied with SIS ID's which will impact all connected district applications.

 If you have any questions about preparing for summer school, please reach out to Clever support! We are happy to help!