Clarifying Information on the Definition of a School

School: WISEdata/School Directory

The purpose of this page is to provide definitions and details for various local education agency types.

WISEdata Reporting

School Districts and independent charter schools, established under Wis. Stats §118.40 (2r). and Wis. Stat. §118.40 (2x), are responsible for submitting data to WISEdata for students enrolled to meet accountability and reporting requirements under state and federal law. Private schools that participate in the Private School Choice Programs are also required to report certain data to the DPI through WISEdata. Submitted data impacts district and school report cards. For more information about WISEdata reporting, please see the WISEdata landing page. Please see the Report Cards Home and About Wisconsin Accountability webpages for additional information about the accountability systems in Wisconsin.

The accordion sections below cover the following agency types:

Public Schools

Charter Schools

Private Schools

CESA

County CDEB

State Agency

Juvenile Detential Facilities (Act 212)

Public Schools, including Charter Schools

Public schools are the elementary and high schools supported by public taxation (see Wis. Stat. § 115.01(1)).

A public school:

is part of a local education agency or is itself a local education agency.
- In Wisconsin, a local education agency can be a school district or independent charter school.
- In addition to districts and independent charter schools, there are some other entities identified in Wisconsin as LEAs (for example, the WI Department of Corrections and the WI Department of Health Services).
has an assigned administrative unit (i.e., administrator or principal),
has a unique identification code assigned by the DPI,
provides or directly supervises the primary PK-12 educational services,
serves a grade or grades within the 4K-12 range (see Wis. Stat.§115.01(2)),
has one or more teacher/s to provide instruction or care, and
may be located in one or more buildings.
For federal reporting purposes, public elementary/secondary school is defined as an organization authorized by public authority and financed primarily through public funds to provide public education to students. See the Attachment B EDFacts Package 22-23, 23-34, 24-25 resource for additional information.

A public school is not:

a program for students enrolled in another public school.
- Programs are not assigned school codes, and students participating in a program remain enrolled in a school.
- Programs are typically housed within pre-existing schools.

Charter Schools:

Charter schools, established or created under Wis. Stats §118.40, are public, nonsectarian schools created through a business-like contract or "charter" between the charter governance board and the chartering authority or authorizer. In Wisconsin, charter schools can be authorized by a school district or an independent authorizer. Additional information about charter schools is available on the Charter Schools in Wisconsin webpage.

District Authorized Charter School: Every school district in Wisconsin can authorize a charter school. Charter schools authorized by a district are a part of that district.

Independent Charter School: Independent charter schools are their own local education agency and are not part of a public school district. For additional information about ICS, please see the Independent (2r or 2x) Charter Schools webpage.

Virtual Charter School: A virtual charter school is a type of district-authorized charter in which all or a portion of the instruction is provided through means of the internet and the pupils enrolled in and instructional staff employed by the school are geographically remote from each other. For additional information about VCS, please see the Virtual Charter Schools webpage.

Multi-district Charter Schools: A multi-district charter school has one authorizing district and one or more participating consortium member districts that have entered into a s. 66.0301 agreement with the authorizing district. The charter school will be listed in the School Directory under the authorizing district. Additionally, every participating district will also have an iteration of the school listed under its district. Please see the Consortium Charter Cheat Sheet for additional information about accountability and other considerations.

Each of the following have authority to authorize a charter school in Wisconsin:

The common council of the city of Milwaukee
The chancellor of any institution in the Universities of Wisconsin (UW System)
Each technical college district board
Waukesha County Executive
College of Menominee Nation
Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University
Universities of Wisconsin Office of Educational Opportunity

Private Schools

A private school:

provides a private or a religious-based education program.
must provide at least 875 hours of instruction each school year and a sequentially progressive curriculum of fundamental instruction in reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, and health, as well as meet other requirements in state law under Wis. Stat. s. 118.165 (1).
submits the PI-1207 annually to provide required data and verify their status as a private school. Additional information about private schools is available on the Private Schools – Information webpage.
is not part of a local education agency and is not responsible for providing free appropriate public education. In the School Directory, each private school is assigned a LEA code based on the school district they are associated with.

Assignment of Private Schools

All territory in the state must be included within a public school district by law (Wis. Stats §117.05). All private schools are:

associated with a public school district for the purposes of equitable services provided by the public district.
assigned a unique school code.
assigned a local education agency code for the public school district where the private school is located.
The process to associate private schools located with K-8/Unified High School districts is different. The rules related to these situations are described in the table below:

**Rules Used to Associate Private Schools Located within K-8/Unified High School Districts**
Private School Type	Grades	Associated Public District for the Private School
Elementary/Middle	KG - 8	KG - 8 District
High School	9 - 12	UHS District
Elementary through High School	KG - 12	The private school’s associated district is determined by the KG-8 District and the Unified High School District then communicated to DPI. This decision impacts equitable services and IDEA formula funding. As such, communication with DPI is vital. Please submit a Partner Support Team Help Ticket, selecting School Directory Updates from the Applications dropdown to initiate this communication.

Cooperative Education Services Agency (CESA)

There are twelve CESAs in Wisconsin, each one covering a geographic region of the state. The purpose of these agencies is to provide cooperative educational services. Each CESA (pronounced, "see-suh") has a certain number of support staff who assist with Wisconsin Information System for Education (WISE) data reporting to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). CESA staff members collaborate closely with a number of DPI's teams (e.g., Partner Support Team (PS), Special Education Team). Visit the CESA data element page for more information.

County Children with Disabilities Education Board (County CDEB or CCDEB)

As per §115.817, a county board of supervisors may determine to establish a special education program, including the provision of related services for children with disabilities, for school districts in the county. The program may provide for one or more special schools, classes, treatment or instruction centers for children with one or more types of disabilities.

These agencies are often abbreviated as CDEB, CCDEB, or County CDEB.

State Agency

There are a number of State Agencies in Wisconsin. The Department of Corrections (DoC) and the Department of Health Services (DHS) are the only state agencies to report information through the School Directory Management Portal because they provide education services to Wisconsin students.

Act 212: Schools Exclusively Serving Students within a Type of Detention Facility

New legislation was signed into law on March 31, 2022, that impacts districts with juvenile detention facilities and similar facilities located within their jurisdiction. Act 212 creates 115.385 (1g) (f) of the statutes to disallow DPI from including data derived from juvenile detention facilities, Secure Residential Care Centers, houses of correction, and county jails on a district’s report card if 50% or more of the students residing at the facility were not present for the entire school term. The law would first apply to the district accountability report cards for the 2022-23 school year, which will be released in the fall of 2023.

To comply with this statute, districts will have the option to code such facilities as schools in the School Directory. Data of students in these facilities will be reported to WISEdata essentially the same way as they are currently, but data will be reported under the new school code (if the facilities within your district don’t already have pre-existing agency keys). Once students are reported under these new or updated school codes, the Office of Educational Accountability can then identify data from detained students and exclude these data from district report cards if the statutory requirement is met.

Districts are now able to create new schools that exclusively serve detention facilities via the newly updated School Modification App. To apply an additional attribute to an existing school/program exclusively serving a detained population, or to adjust an existing “hybrid” school program that serves multiple student populations (including students who are detained in a detention facility), please open a Help Ticket (select WISEdata Portal from the application dropdown menu). The Customer Service Team will then be able to help you make those school modifications. Further details are outlined below. If you have additional questions regarding how to set up these detention facilities in the school directory, please open a Help Ticket,selecting School Directory from the application dropdown menu).

Visit the Enrollment and Exit Date data element page to learn more about reporting enrollments and exit dates for students detained at county jails and detention centers.

Act 212 FAQ and Use Cases

Who can set up a school for a program exclusively serving students in a detention facility?
- Any LEA may create or designate a detention facility with a school code if they have one of the following facilities within their district jurisdiction: a county jail, a juvenile detention facility, a secure residential care center, or a house of correction. This school set-up is not a mandate, however.
Who should not set up a new school representing programming for students in a detention facility?
- If the LEA has a Department of Corrections facility within your district jurisdiction, such facilities are run by the Department of Corrections and are, therefore, outside of the Department of Public Instruction’s authority and data environment.
- This new legislation does not apply to Residential Care Centers (RCCs) and rather is specifically pertinent to Secure Residential Care Centers (SRCCs), a separate category of facility.
What should an LEA do if they currently operate a hybrid/consolidated educational program that serves students who are detained but also includes various other student populations?
- Each school set-up should be exclusively serving a student population from one detention facility each. The LEA may set up multiple schools to represent multiple detention facilities, but they must be designated with a distinct school code unique to that facility.
- The LEA must update a preexisting school if it doesn’t exclusively serve students from a distinct detention facility. In order to maintain historical accountability and designate a preexisting school as one of the four types of aforementioned facilities, please submit a help ticket.
- Please note that an LEA may also need to establish a new school to house students who were removed from a hybrid program and are not detained in a detention facility. Alternatively, the LEA may want to place the non-detained students from such a hybrid program into an existing school.
- If your LEA has a preexisting hybrid program, you may also need to make modifications in your SIS. Please submit a help ticket if you require assistance. The Partner Support team can verify the school’s current WISEdata reporting status.

Resource Links

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