What is Skyward?
Lake Washington School District uses a student information system (SIS) called Skyward to manage student data. Skyward is a two-way stream of information: It allows teachers and school staff to provide parents access to their child’s attendance, grades, schedules and more, and it allows parents and caretakers to provide schools with updated contact details, health alerts and other vital information about their child. LWSD provides students and their families with Skyward accounts, so they can access this information at any time. This guide is an overview of the features of Skyward Family Access.
Skyward Family Access overview
- Logging in
- Your dashboard
- Online forms
- Attendance
- Grades
- Notifications
- Student profile
- Transportation
Logging in
Login: lwsd.org/skyward
Enter your district-provided Skyward username and password on the login screen and click Sign In.
If you do not know your login information, click Forgot your Username or Password. Enter your email address in the field provided and click Submit. Instructions for resetting your password will be sent to you by email.
Your dashboard
The information you have access to appears on your Skyward homepage, or dashboard, as a series of tiles. Click any of the tiles to see more. If you have more than one school-age child, you will see their names listed at the top of the screen.
Online forms
You may see one or more special tiles on your dashboard. Click these tiles to make sure your child’s school has the most up-to-date contact information for your family. Keeping your address and phone numbers up to date allows your child’s school to contact you or other designated caretaker in the case of an emergency. The nurse alert form allows you to notify the school of any health condition that could affect your child at school.
Attendance
To view your child’s attendance record, click the Attendance tile. Your child’s current excused (X), unexcused (U), and Tardy (T) totals appear in the current year totals section at the top of the screen.
Click the comment icon to see comments associated with an absence.
Click the blue arrow icon to open details for a listed absence and see more information.
More information about absence:
To inform your child’s school of an absence, click the Absence Requests tab.
Next, click Add Absence Request.
Complete the fields:
- Add start date.
- Add end date.
- Check the All Day box or enter times for a partial day.
- Type a reason for the absence in the comment box.
- If you have other children, you can copy the absence by selecting them below.
- Click Save.
Grades
To access your child’s grades, click the Grading tile. The grades screen shows grades your child has earned in each of their classes for each quarter of the school year (term 1, term 2, term 3, and term 4) as well as overall grades for semesters 1 and 2. You can also seethe number of assignments missing, if any.
Click a grade to open the progress report panel at the right of your screen. This panel shows a breakdown of assignments by category.
Notifications
You can set up Skyward to automatically notify you of your child’s attendance, grades and more.
From your Skyward dashboard, (1) click the dropdown next to the home button and (2) click Family Access.
Then click My Messages at the top of your screen.
Next, click Settings at the top of your message inbox.
This is the Guardian Notification Settings menu. To ensure you receive messages about your child’s grades, click the cog icon in the Gradebook section of this menu.
Here you can set up how you’d like to be notified. You can choose whether messages are recurring or sent only once, and you can choose to be notified of missing assignments or grades below a certain threshhold.
Low Assignment Score Threshold is the score at which you want to receive an automatic notification when an assignment grade is at that grade or lower.
Low Current Grade Threshold is the score at which you want to receive an automatic notification when your child’s overall class grade is at that grade or lower.
If you wish to stop receiving messages, uncheck the box for “Send….Messages”.
After you’ve made changes to these settings, be sure to click Save.
Student profile
You can view and verify your student’s information by clicking the Student Profile tile.
If you need to make changes to your family’s information, click Edit. Emergency contacts and health information can be updated using the online form tiles on your dashboard.
Transportation
Click on Transportation in your Skyward Family Access dashboard to view your child's bus route and schedule. Please note bus drop-off times are 1.5 hours earlier on Wednesdays. For more information see the district transportation page.