Back to School Packet

Back to School Packet

The Sudbury Public Schools has replaced the large packet of paper forms that previously went home at the start of each year with an online form in the Aspen Family Portal. The  Aspen Family Portal is already used to access Report Cards, IEP Progress Reports, class placement, and other resources.

By using these forms in the student information system:

• Families will need to deal with far fewer redundant forms.
• Front offices will simply approve the forms rather than having to retype information manually.
• Nurses will have access to medication permissions and other important information sooner.
• Classroom teachers will have access to information about student permissions in a more timely manner.

We have a brief video walkthrough of how to fill out the packet, or look below for a step-by-step tour. If you need help signing into Follett Aspen, remember that your login name is in the format firstname_lastname. If resetting the password does not get you in, please contact your child's school front office for login information.

To get started, click on the Initiate button in the Task area when you sign into the Aspen Family Portal.

Fill out one form for each of student. Select Back to School Packet for the Workflow, and click the Magnifier icon to select which child you are working on. Click the Next button at the bottom to get started.

The fields in the Demographic section on the right only need to be filled in where you have a change in the information visible on the left. Note that because we are a Pre-K to 8 district, we do not contact students at home; those email and phone fields are for home contact information to reach parents or guardians.

There is also a brief question for identifying your family's military status, as the state directs us to collect this information.

Click on the Last Name field to bring up a window for reviewing all the contact info for Parent/Guardian records. We are also transitioning to having Emergency Contact information in the system instead of it just living in paper binders. Please click on each line to bring up a window for entering that information. As the form notes, there is no need to repeat parent/guardian information in the Emergency Contact area.

The Health History section displays information that the school's nurse has on record for your child. Medical Alerts involving allergies and other safety-related pieces of information get shared with classroom teachers, but the general Health Conditions listed here are only accessible to the nurse's office for privacy reasons. Click the Add button to add a line to the Conditions list for the nurse's office. Note that when you hit Add, the form may zoom to the top of the screen; just scroll back down to the Health History area to enter the information and hit OK to save the line.

The Medication Permission section is your opportunity to communicate whether the nurse can administer over the counter medication to your child in these area.

Shifting these Permissions into the student information system allows the front offices and classroom teachers to access the permissions you have selected for your child in a fraction of the time that the old method of manually sorting through large stacks of paper used to take.

The Elementary Schools collect information on student pick-up each day. These are the "standing orders" for how your child will normally be dismissed. If a temporary change is being made on a particular day, or there is a change in the normal daily pickup, please communicate this with the school in writing. Ignore this section for Middle School students.

Near the bottom of the Back to School Packet are three additional forms that may be downloaded, printed, and sent into the Sudbury Public Schools Central Office. For privacy reasons the information in these forms is not stored in the student information system.

When you have completed the form, click the circular box to Verify it is complete, and click the Next button.

After reviewing the information, click the Finish button to submit the form.

The information will be live in our system after a front office administrative assistant and the school's nurse have reviewed the submitted form.

Thank you!