Manage Seat Acceptance Deadlines
Student choices in the School Choice lottery can be assigned a date by which the parent must either accept or reject the seat. After the deadline date, the seat is automatically declined, and the student’s choice is moved from the seated list. When a family accesses the School Choice family interface via their generated URL, the deadline is displayed for the choice if a deadline is assigned.
To enable the Seat Acceptance Deadline feature, your School Choice Lottery must also have the Seat Acceptance and Result Notification & Decision Response features enabled. PowerSchool Enrollment Support manages the configuration for the Seat Acceptance Deadline feature.
Generate Seat Acceptance Deadlines
Use the communication templates to generate a deadline for a seated record with a status of Offered in one of three ways:
Send the Results Available Email Template.
Send the Results Updated Email Template.
Generate the Seated Letter Template.
When one of these actions completes, the deadline date for the choice is assigned to the record. This date will be the current date (the day the email is sent or the letter is generated) plus the number of days indicated in the configuration options. If the background job is not successful, no deadline is generated.
When the student’s choice is no longer Seated, has a status of Offered, or both, the generated deadline is cleared.
Deadline Tokens
In your communication template, use the following School Choice seat assignment tokens to render and communicate the deadline:
- TOKEN:SchoolChoiceSeatAssignment
- TOKEN:SchoolChoiceSeatAssignmentAllLevels
- TOKEN:SchoolChoiceSeatAssignmentLevel1
- TOKEN:SchoolChoiceSeatAssignmentLevel2
- TOKEN:SchoolChoiceSeatAssignmentLevel3
- TOKEN:SeatAcceptanceDeadlineTimeframe
- TOKEN:SeatAcceptanceAlreadyAcceptedDeadlineTimeframe
- TOKEN:SeatAcceptanceDeadlines
- TOKEN:SeatAcceptanceDeadlineChoice#
View Deadlines
All Students View
From the School Choice workspace, select the All hyperlink in the Students section. If a student has a deadline assigned, the seat assignment number, seat assignment status, and deadline are appended in parentheses in the Seat Assignment(s) column. Only choices with a status of Offered will be assigned a deadline date.
Seating Unit
On the Seated List / Waitlist page, in the seating unit where the seats reside, seat acceptance deadlines are displayed inline with the student’s choice. When a deadline is associated with a particular choice, the record displays the date.
School Choice Workspace
The Upcoming Seat Acceptance Deadlines section in the School Choice workspace displays upcoming seat acceptance deadlines based on your configuration and permission settings. Results display the corresponding Seating Unit Level 1 title, accompanied by an integer in parenthesis. The integer is the total number of choices within the configured timeframe with a seat acceptance deadline. Select the Seating Unit title to review the first level with a choice containing a deadline date that falls within the specified timeframe.
Set Deadline Reminders
Automatic Reminders
An automatic reminder notification is sent to the parent email address at 12:00 pm CT on the corresponding day if:
- The Reminder Notification Days are configured.
- A Seat Acceptance Reminder Email Template is defined.
- One of the student’s choices has a Seat Acceptance Deadline.
- The Results Available Email Template has already been sent.
If the student record does not have at least one Seat Acceptance Deadline set and the Results Available Email Template was not sent, no reminder notification will be sent. Both pre-requisites must be true for the email to be generated, even if the student has a Seat Acceptance Deadline set (either from being sent the Results Updated email or by having the Seated Letter Template generated).
Should a student record have more than one Reminder Notification set to go out on the same day, only one reminder notification will be sent to the parent. This might occur if the student has multiple seated choices with a deadline on the same day or multiple seated choices with overlapping Reminder Notification days.
Manual Reminders
You can manually remind parents by using the Send Custom Seated Emails (in the Seating Unit) or Send Custom Email to Selected Students (in the All Students view) tasks. You can manually send Seat Acceptance Deadline Reminder Email Templates as often as needed.
- Select the title of the Seat Acceptance Deadline Reminder Email Template.
Within the preview page, select the option to Exclude records that do not have a deadline set.
With this option enabled, all records included in the current batch without a Seat Acceptance Deadline will not receive an email and are automatically overlooked and not included in the skipped record count. If this option is not enabled, all records included in the current batch without a Seat Acceptance Deadline will not receive a notification but will be included in the count of skipped records.
Edit Deadlines
On the Seated List / Waitlist page, you can edit deadlines for individual student records. If you are a Super Admin or have School Choice permission Edit Seat Acceptance Deadlines enabled for your permission profile, a Calendar icon is displayed next to the student’s deadline date.
- Click the Calendar icon.
- Enter a new, future Seat Acceptance Deadline in MM/DD/YYY format or choose a date from the date picker.
- Enter the reason for changing the deadline.
- Click Change.
The Seated List / Waitlist page automatically updates the deadline for the choice. If a Results Available Email was sent for the choice, a Results Updated Email is automatically sent to the parent’s email. No update email is sent if the Results Available Email was not sent.