.. _years:

Creating Years
==============

A school year encompasses the annual cycle of a school.  For example, most students are promoted at the end of a year.  Most teachers start work at the beginning of the year.  Terms **must** be contained within years.

The school year does not have to correspond to calendar year.  Whatever suits the processes of your school.  It is best to set this up so that every date is part of one school year or another.  School years **cannot** overlap.

If this does not fit the structure of your school, you can simply create a single year that spans three or more calendar years.  It is likely that by the time that year expires, we'll have come up with a revised model for schools that don't work within individual years.

**Setting up a year is necessary for just about any use of SchoolTool**, and it is easiest through the web interface.

As "manager," click **Manage** and then **School Years**:

   .. image:: images/years-0.png

Press the **New School Year** button and enter the Title for the year and the start and end dates and hit **Add**.  Keep the title as short as possible, because it is used as a link frequently.

Click the **[...]** buttons to pull up a calendar widget and select the dates.  Or, if you really want to type them, you have to use YYYY-MM-DD format.

   .. image:: images/years-1.png

This creates a new year, and since it is the only year, it automatically becomes the "active" year and shows up as a link in the top bar.

   .. image:: images/years-2.png

Going forward, to keep your data organized and archived cleanly, this year will "contain" things you'll soon be creating, like terms, group and section rosters, and timetables.