How to Change the Tardy to Absent Conversion Filters

Minimum version: BrightArrow Base 2 v8.4.4

The multi-day attendance filters allow schools to set up their own business logic for which attendance situations require a message sent to the student and/or parent. The default settings can be set at the district level but each school can also set their own settings if they need something different. The recommendation is to set the default at the district that represents the most common settings and only change the individual buildings that need something different.

Note: Since there are many different ways schools calculate their multi-day attendance there are several sections for settings. This will only discuss the Tardy to Absence Conversion options.

What is this for?

The Tardy to Absent conversions are used when a school wants to include absences and tardies in the same calculation but the tardies should be weighted less than the absents. There are 2 values to allow for various possible scenarios.

Lets say a student has 5 absences and 8 tardies

Ex 1: The school does not want to include tardies at all OR tardies that are included count the same as an absent.
         Tardies count the same as absences so assuming the tardies are included in the filter the student has 5 + 8 = 13 absents
         Set both values to 1. This allows a tardy only calculation to count them as 1 as well without making them weighted.

Ex 2: The school includes tardies with absences but the tardies are weighted so that every 5 tardies is 1 absence
         8 tardies = 1 3/5 absences so the student has 6 3/5 absences
         Set the top (Number of Tardies) to 5 and the bottom (Number of Absences to cover to) to 1.

Ex 3: The school includes tardies with absences but the tardies are weighted so that every 5 tardies is 2 absences
         8 tardies * 2/5 = 3 1/5 absences so the student has 8 1/5 absences
         Set the top (Number of Tardies) to 5 and the bottom (Number of Absences to cover to) to 2.

PowerQueries that use these filters

• BrightArrow Attendance Daily Frequency by Code Category
• BrightArrow Attendance Daily Frequency by Code Category - from Filter 1
• BrightArrow Attendance Daily Frequency by Code Category - from Filter 2
• BrightArrow Attendance Meeting Frequency by Code Category All Sections
• BrightArrow Attendance Meeting Frequency by Code Category All Sections - from Filter 1
• BrightArrow Attendance Meeting Frequency by Code Category All Sections - from Filter 2
• BrightArrow Attendance Meeting Frequency by Code Category
• BrightArrow Attendance Meeting Frequency by Code Category - from Filter 1
• BrightArrow Attendance Meeting Frequency by Code Category - from Filter 2

Getting to the filter settings

1. Navigate to Settings > BrightArrow Settings
2. Click on Filters. If doing this from District Office then select the filters in the row corresponding to the district or specific school you wish to alter.
3. The filter options will slide in. Click on Lookup Rules
4. Lookup Rules contains the various settings that can change by school organized by topic. Click on Attendance
5. Find the Tardy to Absence Conversion section

What are the options?

Number of Tardies: How many tardies does it take to convert to the number of absences. This is in whole numbers so if your conversion is every 2.5 tardies is an absence then enter it as 5 so the equation would be every 5 tardies counts as 2 absences

• Default: 1 -> Use 1 to say a tardy counts as a tardy, not to be converted.
• Other Options:
  • Any integer you want -> The number entered will be used as the numerator in the equation

Number of Absences to convert to: How many absences does the above number of tardies convert to. If every 5 tardies counts as 1 absence then enter 1. If every 5 tardies counts as 2 absences then enter 2.

• Default: 1 -> The above number of tardies counts as this many absences.
• Other Options:
  • Any integer you want -> This number is how many absences will be awarded.

What if I do not include tardies in my calculation at all?

If you do not co-mingle absences and tardies in the same calculation then just set both values to 1 and then tardies will not be converted to a partial value. The values are to weight a tardy as compared to an absence where a single absent counts as 1. If tardies aren't included then setting both to 1 is the same as saying leave tardies counting as 1 instead of as a fraction.

Also if you do send multi day tardy messages but they are separate from absences completely then leave them as 1 so that you can get a true tardy count.

I have a school that wants different settings from the rest of the district

If you have different schools needing different settings you can do that as well. First set up the district default by changing the filters in the District row. That will become the default for all schools that are not overriding. Once that is done go to the school that needs different settings and click on Filters for that school. At the very top you will see "Use Settings From:". Change that to either "Do not link" to be independent, or if another school already has the correct settings you may also choose that school's abbreviation in the drop down and the 2 schools will be linked making one school use the other school's settings so you only need to make changes once.