With the majority of NEFEC districts being closed as a result of Hurricane Dorian, I wanted to go ahead and reach out regarding what you will need to do to update Skyward with the changes to your school days. The following notes are from an email compiled by Cortney after Hurricane Irma two years ago and there shouldn't be anything different this time but I could be wrong. (The email is from September 20th, 2017 at 1:56 PM from Cortney if you want to refer to it.) Please let me know if there is something to add or correct and I will send it out again.


  • Please remember to update your school calendars to reflect the days you are closed for the hurricane by changing the "Count As" value from 1.00 to 0.00. If you already know which days you will use as hurricane make-up days, adjust those by changing their "Count As" value to 1.00.
  • To update the number of days in term to less than 90 for Teacher Course records extracting into maintain, you will need to navigate to WS/SR/FL/PS/CO/SC and change the number of Days in Survey 2 for each school in the current, 2020 school year.
  • Please be sure to have an idea on how to reflect your plan for 900 instructional hours. Unlike Hurricane Irma, DOE has not made an announcement (to my knowledge) on any number of forgiven instructional days as of yet.
  • You will need to update the transportation days using the mass change utility to correctly reflect the actual number of days transportation will run.
  • Since we are not within the 11 day window for Survey 2, you will NOT need to make any updates to Survey Period Setup.



Skyward also sent out an email after Hurricane Irma with notes on correctly marking any students who were affected by the hurricane for reporting to DOE. While Dorian is currently slated to skirt the east coast of the state while remaining in the Atlantic and (hopefully) not displace any students, please be aware of these steps in case you do have students affected by the hurricane. (This email was sent on September 7th, 2017 at 3:48 PM from Skyward Support Center.) Their notes are below, in Q&A format:


Question 1: How do we code new student's coming to our district from any of the affected areas?
Answer: To correctly report the appropriate Disaster Affected Student value, please follow these steps:


During the new student enrollment process you will want to fill-in the Disaster Affected field with one of the following codes:

W- Yes, this student changed schools within this district this school year due to a hurricane.

Y- Yes, this student moved to this district this school year due to a hurricane.


(Note the difference between the two codes. "W" is for students displaced within your district and moving to another school while "Y" is for students outside your district who have been displaced and moved into your district. -MVP)


Note that the Disaster Affected field is located on the Student's Entry record found on the Entry/Withdrawal tab. Additionally, this information is reported on Survey's 2, 3, and 5 in the Prior School Status/Attendance Format.

Question 2: If students are coming to our district because of [Dorian] and are homeless, how do we code them correctly?
Answer: In addition to following the procedure outlined in question 1 above, you will also need to create a Homeless record for the student. This can be accomplished by navigating to the Homeless tab under Special Programs in the Student Profile. Here you will want to code the student with the Homelessness Cause of "H - Natural Disaster - Hurricane."

Note that these records can also be mass created by using the Mass Assign Special Programs Utility found under Students > Setup > Utilities > Mass Assign Special/Local Programs. This information is reported on Survey's 2, 3, and 5 on the Federal/State Indicator Format.

Question 3: Is there another way we can easily track students affected by Hurricane [Dorian]?
Answer: Yes, you can create a student Category Type Code. This code can then be assigned to the student on the Categories Tab under Student Profile. For more information on how to set up Category Type codes, please review the following document:

https://support.skyward.com/DeptDocs/Corporate/Documentation/Public%20Website/HelpContent/Guides/2049864_Student_Codes.pdf#nameddest=CategoryTypes


Please contact us if you have any questions. If we are made aware of any action by DOE in regards to the hurricane, we will also communicate that out to districts. You can refer to DOE's Hurricane Information page at http://www.fldoe.org/hurricaneinfo/index.stml for their updates on school district closures.


Thank you, and be safe!


CC: NEFEC ETS Student Team

BCC: Skyward Student MIS Contacts


Michael V. Preslar