8th grade students taking high school classes for credit- any best practices?

Alexandra Heines

I'm looking for help and a workaround for students who are enrolled in 8th grade (middle school) and taking 9th grade (high school) classes for credit in the same school year. Currently, Blackbaud does not allow more than one enrollment per school year. I need the 9th grade class credit to be counted towards graduation and used in our HS weighted GPA calculation. For example- an 8th grade student is enrolled in a high school Algebra I class for high school credit. Another example- all of our 8th grade students grade advance to 9th grade during our summer session (June & July). They are enrolled in high school classes during this time but are still technically enrolled in middle school in the system. Any help is appreciated!

Kristin McNeal

@Alexandra Heines
When do you roll your students over for the next school year? We are struggling with the 8th grade enrollment during the school year in freshmen classes, but for summer, we roll them over in June as soon as grades post before summer session starts.

Alexandra Heines

@Kristin McNeal We have a 6 term school year with 6th term being our ‘summer’ term (6/9-7/11). I roll over student enrollments after July 12th. Are you saying you roll over just the 8th grade students before your summer session and they are able to be classified as 9th graders to earn credit?

Jeffrey Ahrendt

@Alexandra Heines
The best workaround that we have found is to create instances of the class that are identical, other than class roster, in both divisions. Students are then assigned to the section aligned with their grade level (MS or US). It's not perfect, as it flags in the system as a conflict for both the teacher and the room and it requires teachers to manage two separate instances for attendance, grading, etc., but as long as you are keeping note of these instances as the scheduler it's workable.

Alexandra Heines

@Jeffrey Ahrendt
Thank you. Are you able to include the MS grade in the US cumulative GPA?

Kristin McNeal

@Alexandra Heines Yes - we roll our 8th graders over and they can take a summer art class that counts in their 9th grade year. Our new academic year begins in the summer and ends with the spring semester graduation.

Alexandra Heines

@Kristin McNeal
Do you know if it could work to roll over or ‘promote’ 8th grade students to 9th grade for the summer session and leave all other grades as is until the summer session is over? I don't want to roll over all grade levels or change our school year end date for everyone.

Sarah Koziarski

@Alexandra Heines
We had a similar situation in the past. The difference being that only students who earned a certain grade earned high school credit. We entered them as transfer courses for those students. We are able to tell it to include it in HS GPA calculation.

Kim Ashcraft

@Jeffrey Ahrendt

We do the same thing.

Kristin McNeal

@Alexandra Heines It looks like in Core …. under manage users, you promote the grade levels individually …so you should be able to.