Purpose

In our experience, the most common reason PowerSchool Administrators may want to lock reporting terms is to maintain the integrity of To-Be-Stored grades.  Locking the Reporting Terms ensures that grades are up-to-date, stable and complete in PowerSchool leading up to the moment when grades are permanently stored as historical for report card printing.  Additionally, locking reporting terms forces administrators to set clear expectations when communicating timelines for when grades can no longer be changed by teachers.  This is absolutely a best practice that we encourage!

Lock Reporting Term Settings

Step 1:  Navigate to District Office Settings

Change the “School” to the “District Office” and navigate to:

District Management > Applications > Lock Reporting Term Settings (PowerTeacherPro)

Step 2:  Enable and set limitations

Once you click on the option to “Enable Term Locks”, set the “Days After Reporting Term” that you wish to perform the lock as well as the “Number of Days to Warn Teachers”.  Currently, the teachers will receive a daily notice of the number of days left until the lockdown.

Step 3:  Submit and confirm setup

Clicking Submit will commit the changes, which you should then be able to see in a screen similar to the one below.  If this is your first time, we recommend that you add MORE days to the “Number of Days to Warn Teachers” so that teachers can give you early feedback that the functionality is working as expected.

When the day comes to lock, you can confirm that the lock is in place by navigating to the Teacher Schedules screen.  From that same screen you can unlock only specific sections individually for the teacher that needs more time to change grades.