Setting up Staff Development
Managers set everything up on the Settings tab of Staff Development. Start with the Principals table: it decides where requests and plans go.
| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Principals | One row per school: the principal's email, a yearly college budget, and the one school goal everyone at the school works toward this school year (one or two sentences). Each school's street address, under Settings → District, is where teachers' mileage starts. |
| District approvers | A primary and an optional backup who approve requests from schools with no principal email, and from staff with no school. Both get the same link, and the first decision counts. |
| Annual hours target | The PD hours each teacher should earn per school year. The Educators report flags anyone below it. Use 0 for no set requirement. |
| Mileage rate | What the district pays per mile, for example the IRS rate. Leave it blank to track miles without a dollar amount. |
| Course types | The activity types teachers choose from, such as Conference or Workshop. Tick College course on a type to ask for the college fields and count it against the school's college budget. |
| Budget codes | Your funding lines, such as a Title II-A grant. Teachers can suggest one, and the business office confirms it when it accepts the completion. |
| District goals | District-wide priorities. A catalog session can support one, and so can a request from a teacher whose school has no goal of its own. |
Who approves
A request goes to the principal of the teacher's school. With no principal email it goes to the district approvers, and with neither, a Staff Development manager decides it in the app. Nobody approves their own request, and nobody accepts or pays their own completion, district managers included. A principal's own request (or plan) goes to the district approvers, and another Staff Development manager decides a manager's own request.
Principals in the app
A Staff Development manager whose Team account belongs to a school acts as that school's principal. They decide its requests and plans, set its college budget and school goal, and manage the catalog sessions their school hosts. They can delete their school's requests that were never approved. District settings, completion review, payment, district-wide sessions and anything already approved or paid stay with managers who cover the whole district.
Hiding schools you don't use
The Google Workspace sync makes a school for every device OU it finds, so the Principals table can fill up with carts, labs and grade levels. A district-wide manager clicks Hide on a row to move it into the collapsed Hidden from Staff Development group at the bottom, or Hide N schools with no staff to tidy them all at once. A hidden school stays in Edventory for devices, loaners and the roster, its staff still show in reports, and past requests keep its name. It's only left out of Staff Development's school lists. Clear its principal email, college budget and goal first, and click Show to bring it back.
Extra approval steps
Need a curriculum director to sign off too? Add steps after the principal under Advanced: extra approval steps. Each step is emailed in turn once the one before it approves.