Membership: Pupil Count Pilot Program

USES: Membership type is used to determine accountability reporting for funding.

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Parts of Membership Count

DPI shows the LEA membership counts in two parts: 

The primary requirement in determining if the student is to be considered for Part 1 or Part 2 is that they meet the relevant membership attendance requirement. Here are the qualifiers to determine if the resident district is the attending district.

If the Resident District is the District of Attendance: The qualification for membership pupil count is if a student is attending your district, you are the resident district, and the student meets membership attendance requirement, as follows:

• The pupil must be in attendance for instruction on the count date; or
• If absent on the count date, have attended at least one of the days before and at least one of the days after the count date and not have been enrolled in any other school.

If a Non Resident District is the District of Attendance: If a student is enrolled in a nonresident district, then the nonresident district becomes the district of attendance, so:

• The (nonresident) district of attendance does not count the student for membership
  • The resident district counts the students for membership
• The (nonresident) district district of attendance determines if a student qualifies for membership attendance or not

This is where the interdependence between LEAs and DPI is crucial:

• If a nonresident district fails to appropriately determine values for student membership attendance or the resident district, then DPI will not be able to count that student under the resident district’s pupil count, and appropriate state aid will not be reflected.
• DPI is dependent on the LEA for accurate information on the student’s value for the resident district. In this new process, the SIS will push the membership data to WISEdata via the API, and DPI will use that data when pre-filling the counts in WiSFiP. As such, we encourage all LEAs to practice timely and accurate data entry.

NOTE: ONLY PUBLIC SCHOOLS SUBMIT MEMBERSHIP DATA. 2R Charters, Choice, CCDEB, and State schools do not submit Pupil Count data.

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Who Is Counted?

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Students Not Meeting Membership Criteria

The following scenarios are informational only and don’t require coding in the SIS.

1. Not Meeting Attendance: If a student is not meeting the attendance requirement for membership they would show under WiSFiP ‘Not Meeting Criteria’ page.

2. Enrollment Not Covering Count Date: If a student enrollment is not covering the count date they would show under WiSFiP not meeting criteria page. For more information refer to the count date data element page.

3. Overlap of Enrollment Dates Outside of the District: If enrollment dates overlap outside of the district, then DPI does not pre-fill the count until overlap is resolved.

4. Overlap of Enrollment Dates Within the District: If overlap exists within the district, then DPI picks the enrollment that is closest to the count date for pre-filling the pupil count.

5. Overlap Between Primary, Membership and Coursework Enrollment within the District: If there is an overlap between primary, membership, and coursework enrollment types within the district then DPI uses the following ranking: primary=1 , membership=2, coursework=3, to pick an enrollment to prefill the membership counts on WiSFiP.

6. Overlap of Enrollment Dates in a Public School and a Charter School: DPI does not pre-fill the pupil count until overlap is resolved.

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FAQs, Details, and Points to Note

1. Additional Attributes for Membership Data Collection: There are some additional attributes required for the new WiSFiP membership data collection. Currently in WISEdata, the LEA is familiar with submitting enrollment for students who are enrolled in their district.

The LEA must additionally manually submit membership attributes such as:

a. Grade Levels for membership: Membership Pupil Counts are collected for the following grade levels:

• Preschool SPED - Age 3, 4, 5, in Grade level PK with IEP 
• Head Start in students in grade level PK with IEP
• 4 Yr old in K4 ( 437 hrs, 524.5 hrs)
• 5 Yr old in KG ( 5 full days)
• 5 Yr old in KG ( 4 full days)
• 5 Yr old in KG ( 3 full days)
• 5 Yr old in KG ( ½ day)
• 5 Yr old Blended (Refer to Pupil Count PI-1563: Student Categories for more information on membership counts for Blended programs.)
• Grades 1-12

For all of the above grade levels, Pupil Counts are pre-filled for each of the count dates (3FS, 2FJ / 1FM-MPS only). On WiSFiP applications these counts will be shown under 3FS steps , 2FJ steps, or 1FM steps.

b. Other Manual Entry Counts in WiSFiP: Currently, the following students are not reported to WISEdata:

• Title 1 program,
• Birth-2 program for special education,
• Other (peer model), and
• 3-yr-old non-special education students

These student counts are not required for WISEdata, however, they are required for membership. That is why DPI is allowing LEAs to enter these student WISEid’s manually in WiSFiP.

During your manual entry, please exercise caution to:

• Make sure duplicate students are not submitted through manual entry.
• Provide the Local Person ID if a WISEid doesn't exist.

c. Intra 220: LEA must upload the Intra 220 student file on WiSFiP. Make sure to include the student’s WISEid within the file.

d. Not Meeting Attendance Criteria: On WiSFiP, the 3FS, 2FJ, and, as applicable, 1FM, steps pages show counts under Part 1 (‘Students I am Counting’), Part 2 (‘Students I am Not Counting’), and all these students meet attendance requirements for membership.

• In order for the LEAs to reconcile membership counts between their SIS and WiSFiP, the WiSFiP application shows the students whose enrollments exist in WISEdata but do not meet membership attendance criteria.

  • For example, let’s say an LEA has 10,000 resident students in grade levels 1-12. Of those, 7,000 students are attending and enrolled in the district. Another 3,000 students are Enrolled Out. The LEA submits 7,000 enrollments to WISEdata.

  • These 7,000 enrollments are published to WiSFiP. Of these 7,000, only 5,000 students qualify for membership attendance, and the other 2,000 do not. The students who do not meet the attendance criteria are shown under the ‘Not Meeting Criteria’ page on WiSFiP.

• This way the LEA can reconcile the actual student count to the membership Pupil Count.

e. Why Might a Student Show Up in ‘Not Meeting Criteria’? An LEA might have a student show up in ‘Not Meeting Criteria’ when your district has enrollment for a student, but

• The student is not meeting the membership attendance requirement
• There is an overlapping enrollment with another district
• Some of the required membership attributes are missing
• Membership attributes submitted do not qualify the student to meet the membership count inclusion requirements

2. Uncommon Scenarios for: Who falls under ‘Part 1- Students I am Counting’?

• Part-time K-12 home based private education/homeschool or part-time 9-12 private school students: Students who are primarily homeschooled/private schooled but are attending your district part time for coursework only, and you are the resident district. They are counted for membership.

• Part-time K-12 home based private education/homeschool in nonresident students: Students who are primarily homeschooled, and are attending your district part time for course work only, and you are not the resident district. They are counted for membership.

• Integration transfer students (Chapter 220 - Inter 220): Students in integration transfer program attending your LEA, but you are not the resident district. They are counted for membership.

• Resident-enrolled out (where tuition is paid by resident district): Students who are not attending your district, but you are the resident district and pay their tuition, are counted for membership in the resident district. These students are mostly in the following programs:

  • 66.0301

  • CESA

  • Open Enrolled Out

  • Tuition

    Tuition Waiver

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If you have WiSFiP Pupil Count questions, contact the DPI School Finance Services (SFS) Team
by email (dpifin@dpi.wi.gov) or by phone (608) 267-9114.

If you need assistance from the Customer Services Team about WISEdata Portal, please submit a WISE Help Ticket.
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