Single Parent code vs Grade Level COde

Wow, that sounds complicated to maintain! We just have a Parent const code, and if we need to restrict it by grade or any other affilitaion pertaining to the student, we pull that through the student's Primary Education information (including attributes).

Jessica Smith:

This question is for RE Users who work with schools.

Currently we use different Constituent Codes to identify parents of students in specific grades. (Freshman Parent, Sophomore Parent etc etc). This means one constituent can potentially have 4 Constituent codes just to identify their parent status. When new parents are added from Education Edge, the automatically get assigned the Parent constituent code and I have to go in and manually change it to their student(s) grade(s). 

We use the codes for the typical reports and stuff (how many Senior Parents gave this year etc.) If we report on all parents I just pull in all 4 codes.

I am wondering if we should just use the Parent constituent code and not have to worry about changing all the codes year after year. I am thinking, in theory, RE has Parent reports that group by child grad year, queries and exports can be run using the Relationship>Individual criteria, and it may be easier on reporting one the entire Parent population with just the one code.

What does your organiztion do: one Parent code or each grade level? What problems have or may arise from using just the one code over the 4 different ones? 


Thoughts, suggestions? Thanks in advance for your input.

 

Having worked in four schools... I have always used a Parent-Current constituent code and Parent-of Alum constituent code (two schools insisted on a Withdrawn code because of some of the history in a very old school).  Nonetheless, you are correct, you can pull most reports based on the child's grad year.  In some reporting, depending on the type of data you are looking for, it does help to have the grad years on the parent record, and I found that challenge was easily remedied be adding a constituent attribute for every child with their grad year.  So the Attribute Category is Parent Class of:, the Description is 2002 or whatever the year.  It is easy eough to globally add or import with the incoming class of parents.


By doing that it gives you some other reporting options both in canned reports and things you may export.  It is also a little more direct, which is helpful at times, than digging down into the relationships to the field with the class year of the student.  It is also helpful so that you do not miss some of the exceptions, like the grandparents or aunt/uncle or some other adult that is the guardian and should be counted, pulled for mailings etc. but may get missed if someone forgets to include that relationship type when pulling class year.