As school ends in the spring, Administrators have an excellent opportunity to review staff placements and make changes in PowerSchool before the craze of the “Beginning of the Year” in August/September. However, schools inevitably have new staff to add and decisions to make about what types of access each staff member is given.
Although each school may determine who has what type of access, the PowerSchool Staff User Guide (June, 2014) suggests that “Only school administrators, PowerSchool administrators, cafeteria personnel, guidance staff, and administrative staff members have access to PowerSchool. Teachers generally only have access to PowerTeacher Portal.”
Types of Access
- Administrative Access: Full access to view and modify any record/field type.
- Teacher Access: Access to PowerTeacher only
- View Only Access: May view all records in PowerSchool, however, not able to modify
Administrative Access:The following step-by-step comes directly from the PowerSchool Staff Guide.
Within PowerSchool, the process looks like the following:
Step 1: Be sure to check the “Sign in to Administrative Portion of PowerSchool” when providing Admin Access.
Step 2: Provide a unique username and password.
Step 3: Chose an appropriate Group Setting; System Administrators Group provides Admin Access, however because schools may determine the names of the groups, the group names may vary.
Step 4: Click “Submit.”
Power Teacher Access: In order to allow teachers access to Power Teacher, a new staff record must be created. For more information on how to add new staff, review the article here.
Once the new staff record has been created, do not exit the record, but select Staff Profile >Account Access and Affiliations.
Step 1: Check the “Sign in to PowerTeacher” box.
Step 2: Create a unique Teacher Username and Teacher Password.
Step 3: Click “Submit.”
Modifying Access for Existing Staff: PowerSchool Staff User Guide provides an easy-to-follow guideline of how to modify PowerSchool Access for existing staff. See below:
Within PowerSchool, this process looks like this:
The most important aspect of adding new staff or modifying existing staff roles is to be sure that the staff have access to what they need to fulfill their roles at your school without providing “full access” to each individual staff member.
To view the Security Groups assigned to your location, follow these steps:From the PowerSchool main page, select “System Setup,” “Security” and then “Groups.”
Notice that there are defined groups within this school and different levels of access those groups are given.
It is recommended that your Administration Team review the access level for each group to determine the appropriateness of each before school begins. Once those decisions have been made, default groups may be set up to encompass “natural” groups of teachers, counselors, food service, administrators, etc.