Scheduling students into classes in Aeries™ utilizes two additional data tables, which are the Student Scheduling or SSS table and the Scheduling Master Schedule or SMS table. The SSS table contains one record for each course request for each student. Additional data includes the scheduled section, teacher request, and a tag denoting a rejected course request or a prescheduled section.
The SMS table is the scheduling master schedule used during scheduling. It is nearly identical to the Master Schedule or MST table that is used during the regular school year. After scheduling is complete the SMS table is copied into the MST table. The scheduled sections in the SSS table are used to create the new scheduled sections or SEC table, which contains the student number and section number for each of the students scheduled classes.
The scheduling process is performed through the Student Scheduling Cycle in Aeries™. It has been designed so that it can be used before the start of school to schedule classes for the upcoming year and also before the start of a semester, to schedule classes for the following semester. The separate SSS and SMS tables allow the school to work on a new set of classes without disturbing any currently scheduled classes.
Students can also be scheduled into classes for the next school year, in the current year’s database. The scheduler will internally add one to each student’s grade level while scheduling course requests. This option can be selected on the Schedule Setup form. It is suggested that this option be utilized from this form but it can also be setup using the Variables for Current School form – option N, which should be set to "1" if scheduling for the next year.