Genesis Parent Guide
The Genesis Student Information System is a student record management software.
As of the 2023-24 school year, Kingsway has migrated to Genesis and is excited to partner with this New Jersey-based company. The Genesis Parent Portal provides families a way to view their student's school records (report cards, attendance, discipline incidents, schedules, balances etc.). Parent Accounts are generated by the district; families that have not received their logon by the time the portal opens should reach out to the district registrar
The Genesis parent portal will open for Kingsway families on July 3, 2023, initially for athletic registration and back-to-school forms. As the summer progresses and the new school year begins, more information and features will become available. As each new feature is rolled out, this page will be updated with helpful information and guides/videos to introduce their use to families.
Important upcoming dates are listed in the Parent Portal Timeline. Information about each area of the Parent Portal is available below.
- Logging In and Out
- Changing the Portal Language
- Forms Library
- Switching Between Students
- Contact Management
- Student Summary Dashboard
- Messages, Alerts, and Personal Settings
- Grades , Grade History and Transcripts
- Attendance
- Discipline
- Student Documents
- Student Letters
- Athletics
- Is There a Mobile App for Genesis?
Logging In and Out
Logging In
Parent and Student accounts are created by the district. When your account is created you will receive a welcome email containing your credentials.
Logging into Genesis is very simple:
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- Go to the Parent Portal URL.
- Enter your Email Address in the ‘Username’ field
- Enter your Parent Portal password in the ‘Password’ field.
- Click the ‘Login’ button
(If this is the first time you have logged in, you will be asked to change your password.)
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Logging Out
It is important to log out of Genesis Web Access properly:
To logout, locate the Log Out button in the navigation menu and click it:
When you click the logout icon you are immediately logged out.
Why log out? Why not just close the browser?
Closing the browser without logging out leaves your session open on the Genesis servers. This creates a security hole that only you can close: Be secure, always log out properly. In this era of Internet access, it is important to always properly close your sessions so that unauthorized persons cannot gain access to your information.
Changing the Portal Language
Forms Library
Forms Library
The Forms Library displays any forms assigned to your students. Some forms (such as back to school forms) are required, and others are optional. Required forms are noted in red, and will prevent access to other areas of the Parent Portal until complete.
Filling Forms
If any forms are available for you to fill out, they will appear on the Forms screen. Clicking on the name of a form opens it so that you can answer the questions it contains.
Each form is different; any questions with a "*" are required. While most forms are completed for each student, some forms are submitted once for all students in the family.
When you are done filling in the form, click the "Update Answers" button. This sends your answers to Genesis. If you do not click this button your answers will not be recorded.
Switching Between Students
Some pages in the Parent Portal display all students at once (the Forms Library for example). Most pages, however, show information for one student at a time. If you have multiple students attached to your account, you will want to switch between them.
To switch between students, click the student's name in the upper right-hand corner of the page. Doing so will show the "Select Student" pop-out. Simply click on the name of the student you wish to look at.
Contact Management
The Contacts screen allows you to view and update the contact information for your students.
If you do not have permission to update the contact information directly via Web Access, you will not see the fields and buttons described here. If those fields and buttons are missing, please contact your school or district offices to update information for your students.
What is listed on the Contact Management Screen?
The Contacts screen lists all telephone and email contact information for:
- The student themselves – your student’s own cellphone and email addresses
- The student’s Guardians – the legal guardians who are allowed to view the children’s information.
- Other contacts – all other people whom you wish the school to be aware of in your student’s lives including:
- Emergency contacts – People you wish to be contacted should an emergency arise and you are not available.
- Doctors
- Dentists
- Hospital to use in an emergency if hospitalization is required.
- Other people it is important that the school know about.
Interpreting Information for a Contact
Each “Contact” represents one person (e.g. Mother, Grandmother, Uncle), or a single organization (e.g. Doctor’s practice, Hospital).
The top line shows the contact’s name and “contact type”: There are multiple contact types that are possible:
- Student
- Guardians
- Emergency
- Other
The "Students that belong to this contact" section shows all of the students associated with that contact and their relationship to the student.
Editing Contacts
Phone Numbers
A contact may have an unlimited number of phone numbers listed for them. If you "delete" button will appear for each phone number.
Email Addresses
A contact can have multiple email addresses listed. If a small "person" icon appears at the right side of the email address, it means that this email address is being used as the login for a parent account. For example, it may be your email address and indicate that you have a parent login.
You can do three things to the email addresses and phone numbers:
- Change the information
- Remove (i.e. delete) the information
- Add new phone numbers and email addresses
WARNING: You can only do these things if your school district gives you permission. This section assumes that you have such permission – if you cannot do the things described here, it is because your district has not given you permission to do them: it is not because the system is broken. If you feel that the access is incorrect, please reach out to your student's school office.
Custody Issues
The contacts screen of the Parent Portal only covers basic contact information. If there is a custody situation involving the student, please reach out to the district registrar. This will ensure that we have any documentation on file, and can ensure that the unique situation is accurately entered into the student record. Whether a contact is allowed access to the student's information, whether they received notices from the district, and any "No Contact" flags will be set by the registrar.
Student Summary Dashboard
Student Summary Dashboard Screen
When you login to the Parent Portal the default home screen is your student’s summary page. The summary page acts as a ‘dashboard’ and contains the following information:
- Information about the student such as student ids, homeroom, grade, counselor/case manager.
- The student’s schedule, including the course, room, and teacher. If you are viewing the page during the school day, the class the student is in ‘right now’ is highlighted in green.
- An attendance summary for the current week – this shows you a color coded attendance code for each day of the week.
- Bus assignments for each day of the week.
- Locker assignment and combination
- Schoology access code
- The student's Kingsway password.
Note:
Many elements of the student summary change yearly and will be empty each summer until updated for the upcoming school year (Schedules, Lockers, Buses, Counselors, etc...). Please refer to the Parent Portal Timeline to see when different elements will become available.
Student passwords are changed each year during the summer and are assigned by the district.
Messages, Alerts, and Personal Settings
Message Center
The Message Center provides a list of all messages received for your students. There are no settings on this screen – it is an information screen.
Some messages may be linked to Documents or Letters. There is one Message Center for all your students – all your students’ information is located on the same screen.
To open the message center, click on the bell icon in the menu bar.
Anatomy of a Message
Each message includes a date, an Icon identifying which module of Genesis sent it, the message itself and potentially an additional line of information and possibly View, Link and Delete buttons:
This is the “View” icon. If the View icon is present, clicking it will bring up the document, letter or other content.
This is the “Link” icon. If the link icon is present, clicking it will take you to the screen containing the item related to the message. For example, if the alert is about a document, clicking the link takes you to the Documents screen. If the alert is about Attendance, clicking it takes you to the Attendance screen.
This is the “Delete” trashcan icon. To remove the Message, click the Delete icon.
General
- Change your account password
- Set your accounts home screen (landing page)
- Setup multi-factor authentication.
You can secure your account using the Google or Microsoft Authenticator apps.
Instructions are provided on the page.
Message Alert Setup
While all events are sent to your message center, certain important event types can also be configured to send an email alert. Setting up alerts will send an email for different events associated with your student.
Several categories are available:
- Letters (To let you know a new letter has been posted)
- Attendance (Notifications from the attendance office)
- Messages (To let you know that you have new messages in the message center)
- Discipline (For incidents and disciplinary actions)
- Lunch Application Status (Progress of application if submitted)
You can specify alerts for each student and each email associated with that student.
Grades , Grade History and Transcripts
The Grading area of the parent portal contains three pages:
Current Grades
The current grades page lists the student's classes for the current school year.
The table lists basic details for each course and contains columns for each marking period. As the school year progresses, these marking period columns will become populated with the semester grades (MP1/MP2), and lastly the final grade (FG).
Grade History
Each course taken by the student and the final grade and credits earned are shown grouped by school year.
Transcript
Students and Guardians have access to an unofficial transcript, and can download a copy for themselves. A cumulative GPA is available on the unofficial transcript. Please note that this unofficial transcript is realtime, and could be out of date between marking periods.
Official transcripts (such as for college admissions) can be requested through your student's school counselor.
Attendance
The Attendance area contains three screens:
Daily Attendance
This is your student’s daily attendance summary for the whole school year.
- The Attendance Calendar with each day color coded
- A summary of the student’s attendance for the year
- The ‘Legend’ of attendance codes for your school appears at the bottom.
Class Attendance
This screen shows your student’s class attendance summary for each of their separate subjects. One month is displayed at a time and the screen always starts by showing you the current month’s attendance. You may select any month you wish.
- Class attendance is listed by each school day in the month and shows which classes the student may have missed on each day. Each day for each subject is color coded.
- “Today” is always highlighted in yellow.
- At the bottom of the screen, there is a separate summary for each subject for the entire school year, divided by Marking Periods.
Pickup Release
Genesis allows parents to enter a pickup / release authorization for their eligible students. These details are reviewed by the school's attendance officer and approved or denied. When this feature is made available to parents, a new guide entry will be made on this page with more details, policy, and eligibility requirements.
Discipline
Discipline Record
The discipline screen lists any discipline issues regarding your students that have occurred in the current school year. Each incident record includes the following information:
- The date and time period in which the incident occurred.
- A brief description of the incident
- A list of all actions that have taken place or will take place as a result of your student’s involvement in the incident
- Dates on which the actions were or are scheduled to take place.
Student Documents
Documents
The Documents screen lists documents that the school or district has linked to your student’s record. You can view these and may be asked to acknowledge that you have read them.
Download and View a Document
To download and view a document listed on this screen, click the
“Signing” the document
To acknowledge that you have read the corresponding document, click the "Acknowledge that you have read the Document" button
Student Letters
Student Letters
Letters
The Letters page contains a list of letters that have been sent to the student’s guardians. Letters are official notifications such as:
- Attendance Letters – Letters generated when the student has some attendance-related issue (e.g. too many absences).
- Conduct Letters – Letters generated when a student is involved in a discipline infraction.
- Scheduling Letters – Letters related to scheduling classes for next year.
Clicking on the blue icon will allow you to view and print each letter.
Athletics
Athletic Registration
Prior to each sports season, the District will make a sports participation form available on the Forms page. Completing this form and the included releases will add the student to the selected sports team's practice roster.
Athletic Eligibility
The Athletics Eligibility page in the portal allows parents to track their student's ability to participate. For each season that a student has signed up, you will be shown the participation requirements.
Academic eligibility is based on accumulated course credit over the preceding terms.
All students require a current physical exam. A physical is good for 365 days. This section displays whether the season will fall under the current physical on file.
NJSIIA required releases are shown, along with their expiration dates. These releases are typically completed as part of the sports registration form.
For more information about Kingsway's eligibility requirements, visit the Participation Guidelines Page.
Is There a Mobile App for Genesis?
Genesis does not have an App Store download like PowerSchool did. Instead, the entire site is "mobile ready", meaning that the pages scale to any size screen.
You can simply bookmark the page to find it easily. For those users who would still like to have an icon or tile on their phones home screen, you can; instructions for IOS and Android devices are as follows:
iPhones / iPad: (note: you have to use the safari app to do this)
https://www.howtogeek.com/667910/how-to-add-a-website-to-your-iphone-or-ipad-home-screen/
Android:
https://www.howtogeek.com/667938/how-to-add-a-website-to-your-android-home-screen/