Defining Bell Schedules

During the 'prepare to build' schedule process, you might want to define your school’s bell schedules.

Note: If your school uses more than one bell schedule during the same schedule day, you need to define bell schedules before you build. Otherwise, you can wait to define your bell schedules in the School view, after you commit your schedule.

When you define your bell schedules, you define the start time and duration for each schedule period in your school. Then, when you validate your 'prepare to build' data, the schedule engine checks for any conflicts arising from the bell schedules.

Not all schools need to define bell schedules. You need to define bell schedules for one or more of the following reasons:

  1. Your school has periods that overlap. For example, some schools have lunch span three periods – 4, 5, and 6. You need to define the times of these periods to determine if and when there is a schedule conflict.
  2. Some schools have shorter periods in the afternoon (20 minutes) than in the morning (40 minutes). You need to define bell schedules to determine schedule conflicts for students.
  3. Two grades in the same school might have different schedule shapes. For example, fifth graders might operate with a 4-day/5-period schedule, and sixth graders might operate with a 5-day/6-period schedule. Because you can only define one schedule shape per school, you can use bell schedules to differentiate between the two schedules.

Note: If you want the build schedule engine to reference bell schedules when building the master schedule, select the Include in scheduling checkbox when defining bell schedules.

To define bell schedules:

  1. Define bell schedules for your school in the School view.
  2. Define if a scenario uses bell schedules in the Build view.
  3. If you create more than one bell schedule for your school, use Bell Schedule rules to assign the appropriate bell schedules to rooms and courses.