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Academic terms define the school year windows that Zion uses to group goals, scores, and reports. Every org has one term marked current at a time, and that term is what grading, Goal Check, and reporting anchor to. Only administrators manage academic terms.

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Why terms matter

A term is not just a label. Reports, Goal Check history, and grade summaries are all read against the org’s current term. If no term is configured, features that depend on a term window have nothing to anchor to, so setting up at least one term is a prerequisite for reporting to make sense.
Only the administrator role can create, edit, delete, or set the current term. Supervisors, monitors, teaching staff, parents, and students do not have access to /academic-terms.

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Term fields

FieldRule
Name3 to 50 characters
Start dateAny valid date
End dateMust be after the start date
CurrentExactly one term per org can be flagged current

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Creating a term

1

Open Academic Terms

Navigate to /academic-terms.
2

Click Create New Term

Enter a name and a start and end date.
3

Submit

Zion rejects a term whose date range overlaps an existing term. Overlap is checked both in the app and at the database level, so it cannot be bypassed by a race condition.

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Setting the current term

Only one term can be current at a time. Clicking Set as current on a term clears the current flag from every other term first, so the switch is atomic and there is never a moment with two current terms.
If no term has been explicitly set as current, the app falls back to whichever term’s date window contains today’s date. Once you explicitly set a current term, that flag takes precedence over the date-window fallback.

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Editing and deleting terms

Administrators can edit a term’s name or dates from /academic-terms, subject to the same overlap check used at creation. Deleting a term is blocked if the term has goals or scores linked to it. This keeps historical goal and grade data from being orphaned. To remove a term that has data attached, address the linked goals or scores first.

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What a term drives

Goal Check

Daily goals and progress are recorded against the current term.

Grading

Score entry and grade summaries are scoped to the current term.

Report cards

Report generation reads the current term to determine the reporting period.

Students

PACE assignments and student records reference the academic calendar terms define.