Rostering: Discretionary Hours

Definition of Discretionary Hours

A discretionary hour is an hour that a service can claim an Other Teacher as a Certificated Teacher for the purposes of the Staff Hour Count.

Services that must complete the Staff Hour Count may record the hours worked by relievers who are Other Teachers as Certificated Teacher Hours for the purposes of the Staff Hour Count for up to 80 hours (this figure may change - subject to MOE rules) during the funding cycle.

Roster and Discretionary Hours

In the roster, you can set the task for a given Staff to "Discretionary" for the period you wish to cover.

To input, navigate as follows:

1. In the left-side menu, navigate to Staff Roster.
2. Select the Staff Roster Sheet or Staff Scheduler tabs.
3. Navigate to the day/date.
4. Add the team member to the roster, in the dropdown, select 'Discretionary' and apply to the hours applicable.

You may wish to add a note around who you tried to contact and the reasonable steps you took to locate a suitably qualified team member, to input this information, navigate as follows:

1. Locate the team member who has been assigned the Discretionary hours and select the down arrow underneath their name.
2. Select 'Edit Notes'.
3. Type in the relevant details.
4. Select 'Save'.

Please note: When you apply discretionary hours for a registered reliever (or any registered staff member) it will not appear in the centre funding report, as the teacher is already certified.

Applying discretionary hours at the time interval where you already have enough qualified teachers will not improve the ratio.

Reporting Options

There are several options for viewing Rostered and Assigned Discretionary Hours in Discover.

Via Reports > Staff Reports > Staff Hours By Activity, specify the funding period date range, and the hours broken down by Task Type. Check the totals for Discretionary

Please note: If you have applied a Discretionary Hour to a time period where it is not needed, the Staff Hours By Activity report will still display this as a task that has been used, but Discover will not count this Discretionary hour in the Centre Funding report if it is applied to a time period where it is not required. 

A breakdown of Discretionary hours rostered by Admins, vs the hours assigned by Discover to maximise funding can be found in two locations:

1. Registered Staff Percentage widget on the Dashboard

2. Discretionary Hours Report in Finance Reports

Centre Funding and Discretionary Hours

The Centre Funding report will need to be run across the funding cycle dates to ensure the most accurate information fore Discretionary hours is being displayed. 

In Discover, the system will only count and use those hours toward Discretionary that are applicable and valid to be used.

If the Centre Funding Report is only run one month at a time, there are two factors that affect the count; one is partial weeks, and the second is the way discretionary hours are applied in the back end of the system. 

Discover applies applicable discretionary hours only to the days where the ratio is least or below 80%. Hence, if the Centre Funding report is run only for each month individually, the count could be 8 hrs and 10 hrs respectively, but if run together, the count could be 16 hrs.

The best way to keep track of Discretionary Hours that have been used on the Centre Funding Report is to run the report from the first month of the funding cycle and keep adding in the months as we progress through the funding period.
For example, if today's date is 25-Apr-22 and we want to find the total Discretionary Hours that have been used (under valid scenario and counted) we would run the Centre Funding Report Month From Feb-22 Month To Apr-22 together.

Submission with RS7

When you submit your RS7 via Discover, the system will also email the Discretionary Form to the MOE and cc the Centre Administrator so the form does not need to be manually submitted.

Rounding for Discretionary Hours

As per the MOE handbook, round the total to the nearest whole number. Numbers ending in 0.5 or above should be rounded up to the next whole number. Numbers ending in 0.4 or below should be rounded down to the previous whole number.