October 2023
Dear Parents/Guardians:
Our upcoming Parent-Teacher Conferences will be held on the evening of Monday, November 20th from 6:00pm to 8:30 pm and Tuesday, November 21st from 8:00am to 4:00pm. Monday evening families will be able to schedule an IN PERSON conference from 6:00pm to 7:20pm and VIRTUAL from 7:30pm to 8:30pm. Tuesday’s conferences will be IN PERSON from 8:00am to 11:20am and VIRTUAL from 11:30am to 4:00pm. Lunch for staff will be from 12:00 to 12:45pm.
In an effort to streamline the process and make it most convenient for parents and guardians, we will be using an online scheduling program called “Pick-A-Time,” which will enable you to schedule your own appointment using a home computer or other electronic device. Attached to this letter you will find steps necessary to schedule your conferences. Once scheduled, you will be able to print a full schedule of what you have chosen. Access to this website will be available starting Monday, October 30th through Thursday, November 16th. Information is available on the Middle School home page and will be posted on your child’s Google Classroom and on Valley Central social media.
**When parents schedule their appointment with the team, they will automatically be scheduled with their child’s core team teachers covering Math, Science, English, and Social Studies teachers. Some exceptions may apply, but parents will be able to see these from the scheduling screen. If a student is a part of a collaborative class, the special education teacher will be included in these team meetings also. All other teachers can be scheduled individually. Special area classes are scheduled with the individual teacher.
If you schedule virtual conferences, it is advised that you email yourself your schedule from the Pick-A-Time scheduling screen. This will provide an email containing all your Google Meet live links to your appointments. On the date and time of your appointments, please join each Google Meets through this email. During these times you will be provided with an opportunity for a private conference with your child’s teacher(s). Each parent-teacher conference is limited to ten minutes.
Please note Pick-A-Time will only allow you to schedule one appointment per teacher per student and one team per student. For students who have collaborative teachers, the program will schedule both teachers at the same time. If you need to cancel or change appointments, you must do it in Pick-A-Time and give at least 24 hours notice.
We believe that direct and personal communication with your child’s teachers is vital to their success. We encourage you to participate in these parent-teacher conferences. If for some reason you cannot attend, please be reminded that you are welcome to call the Middle School throughout the school year to meet or speak with any staff member.
If you have any questions or problems with scheduling, such as multiple children, co-parenting or technology concerns, please contact Amanda Collins at amanda.collins@vcsdny.org.
Sincerely,
Jayme Ginda-Baxter
CONFERENCE SCHEDULING
Middle School
Go to the Middle School website and click on the link to get to the Parent-Teacher Conference Scheduler.
Register – (Required every year)
- Enter your email address and click on “Login/Create Account.”
- Fill in the required fields and register.
**PLEASE NOTE: All previous profiles have been cleared, so even if you have registered in previous years, you will need to register again.**
Scheduling
- You will need to link your student(s) to your account by entering their first and last names and birthdate as indicated on the initial scheduling screen. You will need to exclude any suffixes i.e Jr or III, hyphens or apostrophes or any other punctuation or special characters, then click Add. You will be able to add as many middle school children as necessary.
- You will see a list of teachers, their appointments are color coded. Each student(s) schedule will be listed separately.
- Each colored square represents an available meeting time. The legend shows you which teacher corresponds to which color and the times increase as you go down the page. Monday, November 20th has evening appointments (6:00pm-8:30pm) and these appointments are IN PERSON from 6:00pm to 7:20pm and VIRTUAL from 7:30pm to 8:30pm. Tuesday, November 21st has daytime appointments (8:00am to 4:00pm) and these are IN PERSON from 8:00am to 11:20am and VIRTUAL from 11:30am to 4:00pm.
- Click on a square to schedule that time.
- You will have the option of setting a time when you would like an email reminder to be delivered. There are already pre scheduled reminders that will be sent by the system.
- Click on “Create Appointment.”
- Repeat until you have an appointment with each teacher you would like to visit with.
- You can click on the “Printable Schedule” link located on the top menu bar (center, right) and print the resulting web page to get a hard copy of your schedule. You will also receive an email of the schedule to the email address you entered when creating your account.
- To see your schedule, click on the “Your Schedule” link located on the top menu bar (left). From this listing you can:
- Change the time of an appointment; click on Change time to the right of the appointment you want to change.
- See the details of individual appointment, print or e-mail schedule; click on Details to the right of the appointment you want to see details for.
- Cancel an appointment; click on Cancel to the right of the appointment you want to cancel.
If you make VIRTUAL APPOINTMENTS it is recommended that you email yourself your schedule. You will receive an email with a chart of all your appointments with the links to the Google Meets. Keep this email handy so you can use it on the day of your conferences.