Ready to Start (For Real)

[DUNNER7]

Thanks for all the continued help. I have done much thinking, reading, and
practicing...I think I am up for the challenge. I have noticed in most of
the posts that I have read about the importance of writing it out/planning
before starting. I think that has finally sunk in. I am going to say what I
want to accomplish and lay out an outline of what I think I need to include.

I want a school database that keeps track of demographic information. I
also want to have teachers able to write disciplinary referrals for behavior
infractions and have my administration respond to the disciplinary referrals
(dispositions). I want these displinary infractions and dispositions to the
referrals to be saved in a table as data. I also want staff to be able to
record "interventions" ie. phone calls, meetings w/parents, meetings with
students, referrals to mental health, probation, etc. in a table. I also
want are planned interventions, "group sessions", counseling, D/A (drug &
Alcohol) groups, mentoring, etc. to be able to be recorded in another table.
I also want the daily attendance recorded with date/time of student entry
into the building. I also want to record the date/time for early dismissals
from the building and reasons.

Here is what I think I need:

Demographics Table:
StudentID (pk)
LName
FName
Etc.


Referral Table:
Incident (auto number PK)
StudentID
StaffID
Location(do I need a seperate table to list 8-10 different locations)
Violation (do I need a seperate table to list our 16 violation codes)
Description (brief narrative)
Teacher Action (List?)
Date/Time

Disposition Table:
Disposition (auto # PK)
StudentID
StaffID
Action (Do I need a table to list the "consequences")
StartDate (suspensions)
EndDate (suspensions)
ConReturn (W/ parent) checkbox
(QUESTION, HOW DO I LINK REFERRAL & DISPOSITION TABLES SO THAT THE
DISPOSITION ADDRESSES THE SPECIFIC REFERRAL?)

Conference Table:
ConferencNumber (auto # PK)
studentID
StaffID
Description (Table with various things ie. phone call, conference, etc)
Comments

Intervention Table:
InterventionNumber (auto # PK)
StudentID
StaffID
Description (List of interventions ie. group session, individual, referral
for treatment, etc)
Date
Time
Comments

Attendance Table:
AttendanceIncident (auto # PK)
StudentID
Date/time
Reason (if absent reason for absence, court, bus, sickness, etc)

That is the basic structure I came up with and I think it covers most things
I need.
I think I need some basic tables to cover other lists that our used in the
main tables:

Demographic Table related tables:
Bus info
Locker info
Entry Codes
Exit Codes
Lunch Code (free, reduced, regular)
homerooms
ethnicity
grade level
gender
zip codes

Discipline Table related tables:
Violations
Locations
Teacher Actions

Disposition Related tables:
Action (consequences)

Confrence table related tables:
Descriptions

Intervention table related tables:
Descriptions

Attendance table related tables:
Reasons for absence (court, excused, unexcused, bus, medical, religious, etc.)

Sorry so long, but I wanted to write out my thinking and process.

Does it look comprehensive enough?

Thanks,
Del Dobbs

 

[Jeff Boyce]

Del

See comments in-line below...

Thanks for all the continued help. I have done much thinking, reading,
and
practicing...I think I am up for the challenge. I have noticed in most of
the posts that I have read about the importance of writing it out/planning
before starting. I think that has finally sunk in. I am going to say
what I
want to accomplish and lay out an outline of what I think I need to
include.

I want a school database that keeps track of demographic information. I
also want to have teachers able to write disciplinary referrals for
behavior
infractions and have my administration respond to the disciplinary
referrals
(dispositions). I want these displinary infractions and dispositions to
the
referrals to be saved in a table as data. I also want staff to be able to
record "interventions" ie. phone calls, meetings w/parents, meetings with
students, referrals to mental health, probation, etc. in a table. I also
want are planned interventions, "group sessions", counseling, D/A (drug &
Alcohol) groups, mentoring, etc. to be able to be recorded in another
table.
I also want the daily attendance recorded with date/time of student entry
into the building. I also want to record the date/time for early
dismissals
from the building and reasons.

Here is what I think I need:

Demographics Table:
StudentID (pk)
LName
FName
Etc.


Referral Table:
Incident (auto number PK)
StudentID
StaffID
Location(do I need a seperate table to list 8-10 different locations) yes
Violation (do I need a seperate table to list our 16 violation codes) yes
Description (brief narrative)

yes ... if the choices are constrained to a list

Teacher Action (List?)
Date/Time {remember to change that name}

Disposition Table:
Disposition (auto # PK)
StudentID
StaffID
Action (Do I need a table to list the "consequences")

yes -- do you have a list of (constrained) consequences?

StartDate (suspensions)

hold on ... if you have "suspension" as one of your consequences, you
wouldn't put the suspension Start/End in this table...

EndDate (suspensions)
ConReturn (W/ parent) checkbox
(QUESTION, HOW DO I LINK REFERRAL & DISPOSITION TABLES SO THAT THE
DISPOSITION ADDRESSES THE SPECIFIC REFERRAL?)

I suspect you need a bit more table structure.

What is the relationship of incident to consequence? Can you have multiple
consequences from a single incident? If so, you need to have a table that
lists consequences of an incident (?referral). And if those consequences
have start/end date/time, put those fields there.

Conference Table:
ConferencNumber (auto # PK)
studentID
StaffID
Description (Table with various things ie. phone call, conference, etc)
Comments

How is this related to an incident?

Intervention Table:
InterventionNumber (auto # PK)
StudentID
StaffID
Description (List of interventions ie. group session, individual, referral
for treatment, etc)
Date
Time
Comments

How is "intervention" different from "consequence"? How are "interventions"
related to "incidents"? ... or maybe they aren't, and are related to
students?

"Date" and "Time" are reserved words ... and Access offers a single datatype
Date/Time. You don't need two fields.

Attendance Table:
AttendanceIncident (auto # PK)
StudentID
Date/time
Reason (if absent reason for absence, court, bus, sickness, etc)

The table structure appears to require a "reason" for attendance?! What is
an AttendanceIncident? Are you using this to show whether a student was
present/absent EVERY possible day?

That is the basic structure I came up with and I think it covers most
things
I need.
I think I need some basic tables to cover other lists that our used in the
main tables:

Demographic Table related tables:
Bus info
Locker info
Entry Codes
Exit Codes
Lunch Code (free, reduced, regular)
homerooms
ethnicity
grade level
gender
zip codes

I suspect some of those (e.g., bus info, homerooms, ...) can change over
time for a given student. Are you considering tracking historical info, or
only "as of today" information?

Discipline Table related tables:
Violations
Locations
Teacher Actions

I don't understand "locations".

Disposition Related tables:
Action (consequences)

Confrence table related tables:
Descriptions

Unless you have a limited (constrainted) set of "conference descriptions",
you wouldn't use a lookup table.

Intervention table related tables:
Descriptions

Attendance table related tables:
Reasons for absence (court, excused, unexcused, bus, medical, religious,
etc.)

Sorry so long, but I wanted to write out my thinking and process.

Does it look comprehensive enough?

Thanks,
Del Dobbs

Good luck!

Regards

Jeff Boyce
Microsoft Office/Access MVP

 

[Gina Whipp]

Del,

In addition to what Jeff said, I am noticing some field names that will give
you problems down the road. Have a look at...
http://allenbrowne.com/AppIssueBadWord.html I would also get rid of the
spaces in the field names and any wildcard characters to avoid extra typing
and issues later. (Field names with spaces have to enclosed in brackets -
[Phone No] - that's two extra characters you have to remember to type for
every field name that has a space.)

--
Gina Whipp

"I feel I have been denied critical, need to know, information!" - Tremors
II

http://www.regina-whipp.com/index_files/TipList.htm