From: DPI Open Enrollment Sent: Monday, September 13, 2021 8:23 AM To: Demrow, Jennifer DPI Subject: 3rd Friday OPAL Reporting To – District Administrators and Open Enrollment Coordinators From – Jen Demrow, Open Enrollment Consultant Subject – 3rd Friday OPAL Reporting DUE DATES The 3rd Friday Count date is coming up fast – this Friday, September 17th. The membership report is due to the School Finance team on Friday, October 1st. Nonresident districts must make 3rd Friday entries in OPAL on or before Friday, September 24th. The 3rd Friday list will lock at midnight September 24th. Changes after that will need to be made for individual students from the All Students list under the Change Enrollment tab. Resident districts are waiting for this information. Nonresident districts are requested to make these entries as soon as possible after the 3rd Friday in September. The method for reporting 3rd Friday open enrollment is OPAL. We do not recommend reporting students as “Open-Enrolled” prior to the 3rd Friday in September. This recommendation also includes entering enrollment for alternative application students. With the elimination of the July Aid Adjustments, it is crucial that districts enter their 3rd Friday Count information correctly, as there will be no opportunity to make corrections after May 13, 2022. FOR CONTINUING STUDENTS AND STUDENTS WHO APPLIED DURING THE REGULAR APPLICATION PERIOD Nonresident District: Go to the Students tab, then the 3rd Friday in Sept tab. For each student who is open enrolled into your district, click on “Open-Enrolled at [your district]”. A student is open enrolled into your district if the student is in attendance in your school district on the 3rd Friday in September or, if the student is not in attendance on the 3rd Friday in September, attends at least one day before AND at least one day after the 3rd Friday in September. For each student who is not open enrolled in your district, click on “Not Open-Enrolled at [your district]”. Nothing else needs to be done. The resident district should not be changed. The address does not need to be updated. Do not try to withdraw the student. Be sure to SAVE. If it states “n/a” under the Res Agrees column, it means the resident district has not yet entered whether they agree or disagree with your entry. SPED Status: Once a student has been reported as open enrolled, you should go into the “Special Ed” tab. This will contain only the names of students reported as open enrolled. Most students will already have a SPED or Not SPED entry. Check the entry for each student to be sure it is correct and change it, if necessary. A number of students may have changed from SPED to Not SPED in 2017-18 or vice versa. This is the time to make that entry, if you did not do so last year. **If a student is SPED on 3rd Friday, you need to select “SPED 3rd Fri”. Once you select this, you must select “Always” under the “Amount of SPED During Year”** **If a student is not SPED on 3rd Friday, you need to select “Not SPED 3rd Fri”. Once you select this, you must select “Never” under the “Amount of SPED During Year”** You do not need to enter “Days SPED” or “Days Not SPED” under this tab unless the student is a partial SPED student (meaning the student was SPED for a certain number of days and the student was not SPED for a certain number of days during the school year). Make sure you click the Save button. Resident District: You cannot make any entries in the 3rd Friday list until the nonresident district had made its entries. If the radio buttons are grayed out, it means the nonresident district has not yet made its entry. If you agree with the nonresident district, click on “Agree with Nonresident”. If you agree with all the nonresident district entries, click on the “Agree with All” button. If you disagree with the nonresident district, the preferred action is to contact the nonresident district to resolve the issue. The less-preferred option is to click on “Disagree with Nonresident” (in which case, the districts need to resolve the issue anyway). Be sure to SAVE. **The Agree/Disagree entry by the resident district is only a communication tool for districts. It is not used to determine whether or not a student is open enrolled and whether aid payments are received for the student. We look at what the nonresident district enters and what is on their Actively Open Enrolled list. That is why we encourage districts to communicate with each other if there is a disagreement about a student’s entry. *** FOR ALTERNATIVE APPLICATION STUDENTS Please note: When the OPAL rollover occurred on August 2nd, some alternative application students whose enrollment date was after the 3rd Friday Count date in the 2020-21 school year may not have rolled over properly to the All Students tab. Please review your All Students tab and if some students are missing, the nonresident district will need to send us an email at openenrollment@dpi.wi.gov with the students’ names and our programmer will manually add these students to your All Students tab. Once the names have been added, we will send you a confirmation email. Nonresident District: Go to the All Students tab. Click on the “Alternative Apps Only” filter. Click on the student’s name. Click on the Change Enrollment tab. Click “Edit”. Under the 3rd Friday in September heading, click “Yes” or “No” for “SPED on 3rd Friday”. Click on “Yes” or “No” for “OE on the 3rd Friday in September”. If yes, enter the FTE. Under the heading Partial SPED During the Year, click “Always” for “Amount of SPED During Year” if the student is SPED on 3rd Friday. Click “Never” if the student is not SPED on 3rd Friday. Under the heading Alternative Applications, enter the student’s “Date of Enrollment as Alternative App”. For “Days of Open Enrollment as an Exception”, enter 180 (you will always enter 180 for students who begin attending on or before the 3rd Friday in September; if the student later withdraws, you will then enter the exact days of enrollment). Enter the FTE (again). Be sure to SAVE. This will send an update request to the resident district. Resident District: From the Mailbox page, click on New Data Change Requests (the number of requests will be a red number that is highlighted in yellow). Click on the student’s name. There will be a yellow bar with red letters stating “[Other District] is waiting for you to act on:”. Underneath that yellow bar, click on the items listed (3rd Friday changes will show changes for the Enrollment tab). Proposed changes will be highlighted in yellow. If you agree, click on “Accept” for each item or “Accept All”. If you disagree, the preferred action is to call the nonresident district to resolve the issue. The less-preferred option is to click on “Reject” (in which case, the districts will need to resolve the issue anyway). FOR DUPLICATE ENTRIES If you have duplicate entries for one student, you should go into your 3rd Friday in Sept list and mark the newest entry (it might be marked “New” in the Status column) as “Not Open- Enrolled” and the other entry or oldest entry as “Open-Enrolled”. When this has been done and approved by the other district, only one entry for the student should be added to your Actively Open Enrolled list. Please do not request deletion of the duplicate application as we are unable to do this. FOR STUDENTS WHO WITHDREW ON OR BEFORE 3RD FRIDAY For students who withdrew on or before the 3rd Friday Count date, you need to go into the Change Enrollment tab and enter the student’s “OE on 3rd Friday in September” status as “No”. Do not try and withdraw the student for 0 days or 1 day; you cannot withdraw a student who was never open enrolled in the first place. You will get an error message if you try to do this. A student is only considered open enrolled if they are present on the 3rd Friday Count date (or any day before and any day after). We have a training module available that can provide assistance on how to enter a student’s 3rd Friday status into OPAL. To access the module, please go to our open enrollment webpage at https://dpi.wi.gov/open-enrollment, click on “Resources and Links” on the left hand side of the page and select “Training for School Districts” from the dropdown menu. When you are on the Trainings webpage, under the OPAL 101 heading, click on the link “OPAL 101: 3rd Friday in September & 2nd Friday in January”. If you have any questions, please contact us at openenrollment@dpi.wi.gov or call us at 888- 245-2732, option 2. Jen Demrow School Administration Consultant Public School Open Enrollment Department of Public Instruction 608-264-6707 or 888-245-2732, option 2, then 3 Jennifer.Demrow@dpi.wi.gov DISCLAIMER: The content of this email is for informational purposes only and not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should contact your attorney to obtain legal advice, including compliance with state and federal laws and regulations.