Student Information System (SIS)

As the end of Q3 approaches, the SIS team’s been hard at work to upgrade old features and add new ones for you to learn and use! From nurses to disciplinarians, any Aspen user is sure to find an update that affects them below. See what’s changed in the SIS newsletter!

During an Aspen upgrade conducted in 2022, a change automatically happened in the attendance module wherein selecting the “Other” override/change reason resulted in the ‘Activity Comment’ becoming an optional, rather than required, field. In order to comply with District attendance policies, the Aspen team has fixed this issue and updated the 'Activity Comment' field to make it a required field again. Attendance coordinators can see the change in action when updating a student’s school day attendance record under the Student and Attendance top tabs. Please reference the section "Modifying Daily Attendance" for more information on the "Other" change reason in the Aspen ES Attendance or HS Attendance guides.

As of August 26th, elementary schools now have access to a new Behavior Entry workflow and a specialized behavior report for PreK-2nd grade students. These updates are part of a policy change designed to better support the unique needs of our youngest learners. For detailed instructions on using the new workflow and report, please refer to the following guide and video.

To better reflect the end dates of CPS high school semesters, the formatting on the transcript reports has be changed. Read more about this enhancement to Aspen reports, complete with screenshots to illustrate, on this document.

The Physical Restraint and Time Out (PRTO) incident documentation process changed in Aspen on January 15, 2024. The 11-01 (pdf), Behavior Log, and ISBE Survey no longer needs to be completed and uploaded as separate attachments in the ICT Report. Instead, all 11-01, Behavior Log, and ISBE Survey content will be accessible within the ICT Report. The ICT Report must be completed, and parents must be notified, within 24 hours of the PRTO incident. Parents/guardians may be notified by phone/email and must be provided with a copy of the completed ISBE 11-01 Form (generated from Aspen), Parent/Guardian Notification of PRTO Letter, Parent Bill of Rights, ISBE PRTO Complaint Form, and CPS PRTO Policy.

We've put together this document and video that walks you through adding a PRTO Incident in Aspen.

New and Improved Register/Enroll Student Tool!

The Registration and Enrollment tool has been enhanced to make it easier to use and to reduce the chance of creating duplicate student records. It now allows the user to search for a student by Student ID. If the Student ID is unknown, the tool then prompts to search for a student by parent/guardian's email address, phone number, and finally by student name and birthdate. Learn more about preventing and resolving duplicate student records with this guide and view the updated Student Enrollment and Withdrawal video or user guide for additional process details.

New and Improved Way to Add New Contacts!

 Having multiple contact records in Aspen for parents and guardians can make it more difficult to have one parent portal account with access to all of their students. The new "Add New Contact" tool will make it easier to search for existing contacts before creating a new one. The search will start with parent/guardian email address, followed by phone number, then by name. By reducing the occurrences of duplicate contact records, we will make the family's CPS experience much better! Access the new "Add New Contact" tool at Student Top Tab -> Contacts Side Tab -> Options -> Add New Contact. See the updated video and user guide for complete process steps.

Jessica Mulder, a Super-School Counselor at Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep, has put together a great presentation on how to make Aspen work for you.

If you ever wondered:

• Why can't they add my favorite student field to my data view?
• How can I make my favorite data view the default, saving me extra clicks?
• Can I hide filters and data views that I don't use?
• Can I build my own filter to just show the students that I am focusing on?

The answer is "Yes!" and this presentation drafted by an Aspen super-user, is a great way is get started down that path.

When you’re performing an activity for a subset of students (like mass updating attendance or printing reports), it’s VITAL that you follow the below steps:

1. Select the desired student records
2. Click Options & Show Selected. This will get these students on their own screen.
3. Then perform the desired activity. If you skip Step 2, you will be performing the action on ALL of your active students, even if you checked a subset of records.