School Calendar Domain - Overview

Key Entities

This domain contains: 

• The Session entity, which models an instructional span of time such as a term or semester.

• The GradingPeriod and AcademicWeek entities, which group calendar events according to start and end dates, accordingly.

• The Calendar entity which represents a collection of dates.

• The CalendarEvent entity, which identifies a date and a type of activity for the date such as instructional day, holiday, make-up day, and so forth.

Key Concepts

The key concepts include the following:

• The School Calendar domain model is fundamentally enumerative: all dates of note (e.g., all instructional dates) are listed as part of the calendar. Humans generally think of calendars as being “all non-weekend and non-vacation days between date A and date B,” but in K–12 systems such as SIS systems, calendars are rarely implemented that way. This domain follows suit.

• Note that the Session entity BeginDate and EndDate elements may be needed to determine instructional dates within a session. However, it is not recommended to have a calendar for each session: sessions capture terms on which credits are awarded. Rather, the recommended practice is to have an annual calendar. If it is necessary to know the instructional dates for a term or session, look to the session dates to determine those.

• The Ed-Fi data model has no district or local education agency calendars. Calendars in the Ed-Fi data model represent instructional days and so are school-level and below. A district calendar would therefore be a collection of identical school calendars.