Concerns About Using the Credit Mask in HLS
©Copyright 2008, Budd Churchward
In the normal process of using The Honor Level System, you enter infraction slips, the software prints detention slips with a consequence based upon the recent behavior history, and then you clear the slips so that they are not printed again with the next day's batch.
There is an option in the Site Editor that allows you to edit your consequences. Included there is the option to block the Clear Slips function so that a slip will be printed everytime for that student until you manually clear the detention.
You might think that you want to keep reminding a student that a consquences is coming up that can not be served for a few days. On the surface this may seem simple, but there are several things that can go wrong with this strategy.
Consequences are determined by the student's roll-over window. While you are waiting for the day the student is going to serve this consequence, this window is moving along changing each day. If the student has received an infraction 11 or 12 days ago, that infraction may pop out of the window before your consequence is served. When this happens, the computer is going to change the slip and assign the student a lessor consequence.
On the other side of the situation, while you are waiting for the day of the consequence, the student may receive one or more additional infractions. This can cause the consequence to be greater.
The consequence mask opens the door to letting students fall through the cracks.
So how do we handle consequences that need to be served at later dates?
Here are a few strategies that will help you accomplish what you want without the Roll-Over Window changing the student's status as days go by.
- The simplest solution is to hand the student the infraction slip when it is printed, expect the student to keep track of the pending consequence and show up without any further reminders.
- Another approach is to photo copy the report to detention slips before they are handed out so that you can hand the copy out just before it is time to serve the consequence as a second reminder.
- After you print the detention slips you can print a second or third batch of only those slips that you need for later reminders. You can do this by unchecking the boxes for the consequences you do not printed more than once in the Print Task Manager.