Before utilizing Service Learning, the options under Service Learning Requirements need to be defined. Navigate to the Svc Lrng Requirements page under the Service Learning node.

Create at least one Area by entering a description. Students can be matched to one or multiple Areas. For example, suppose certain students must earn additional hours to count towards a special Scholarship. An additional area could be used for this purpose and tied to the student. Each organization additionally gets matched to one or more areas.

Enter the Required Hours Per Year. This is the amount of hours the student is expected to serve per year in each grade level. Secondly, enter the Maximum Parent Contributed Hours. This is the maximum amount of hours a parent can serve which will count towards the student's required hours. Hours can be banked from year to year if the Allow Banking Hours checkbox is checked, otherwise hours are not banked if the student is over the required hours in any given year. Selecting the Default checkbox will cause new organizations added to be automatically associated with this area.

Enter the date when Service Learning hours will begin to accumulate for that school year. This will allow any Service Learning Hours completed during the summer to be applied to the next school year’s grade level. In the above example, any Service Learning Hours completed before 8/1/2017 will accumulate for the student’s 2017-2018 grade level. The Service Learning Hours completed on or after 8/1/2018 will be credited to the student’s 2018-2019 grade level in the new school year after an enrollment record with their new grade level has been created.

Note these settings are stored in the DPT table within the Aeries database.

To better understand how Banking Hours works, here are some examples. This first screenshot has Banking turned on. It shows 22 hours completed and is displayed for the Total.

With Banking turned off, the total hours is only 20, even though the student completed 22 hours in the 9th grade.

Note: Service Learning Required hours are calculated for an individual student when the user initially visits the Service Learning page for a student. Required hours will be set to 0.00 for prior years if the student was not enrolled, or if enrolled for only a portion of the year, the required hours will be pro-rated and a number less than the full required will be used for the current year. There is currently no option to turn off this initial calculation. The required hours are stored in the SLD and SLH tables, R9, R10, R11, and R12 fields.