WISEstaff: Info, Help and User Guide

The purpose of WISEstaff is to:

• Provide the means to report staff Contract Data (salary, fringe, highest degree, experience) and staff Assignment Data (hiring agency, working agency and school, assignment codes, FTE and other assignment related questions).

• Collect assignment and license data to be used in preliminary and final license audits.

• Provide the opportunity for immediate verification of data by district staff.

• Display staff totals for current and previous years for comparison.

• Provide verification tools and guidance to ensure complete, accurate, and timely data submission.

• Provide a secure platform to collect staff data.

Using WISEstaff helps administrators by allowing them to compare certified staffing information to other districts in the state via the DPI Public Staff Reports site. Administrators can use the dashboard and reports available in WISEstaff as well as the DPI Public Staff Reports to review year-over-year staffing and salary trends.

During the collection period, WISEstaff helps administrators by collecting the necessary information to determine if staff are appropriately licensed. WISEstaff provides a consolidated view of an agency’s staff contract and assignment data. During the first phase of the collection, agencies submit and prepare their data so that DPI can perform the preliminary license audit of their data in January through February each year. This first step of the collection determines if all persons with assignments requiring a license do have a qualified license.

During the second step of the collection, preliminary license audit results are generated and shared in WISEstaff. Agencies review their staff contracts and assignment data extensively looking for errors and omissions of data using the data quality tools and reports inside WISEstaff.

The DPI Customer Services Team also contacts agencies with significant data quality issues prior to the final certification of data at the end of March.

After the final snapshot is taken and reviewed by DPI each year, the new set of data is published on the DPI Public Staff Reports site which provides detailed and summary staffing reports for all public and independent charter school LEAs statewide. Stakeholders such as community members, parents, educators, researchers, journalists, politicians, unions and charitable organizations all use the data in the DPI Public Staff Reports to examine staff data and hold districts accountable for their staffing choices. The final snapshot is also used to complete a final license audit by DPI. The results of the final license audit and final snapshot are used to fulfill state and federal staff and licensing data reporting requirements, including the:

• Inequitable Distribution of Teachers
• Special Education Categorical Aid
• IDEA Personnel reporting
• National Education Association Rankings and Estimates report, and the
• Federal Common Core of Data.

Administrators have different tasks at different times of the year. 

Fall/Winter (September- January)

• Ensure you or your District Security Administrator review staff access to WISEstaff in WISEsecure, especially if there have been changes in personnel or duties. DPI recommends that administrators, business office staff, and state reporting staff have access to both WISEid and WISEstaff.
• Review the WISEstaff Data Collection Timeline and ensure staff who are responsible for reporting data are aware of user group calls and deadlines. The timeline is available on the DPI Staff Collection webpage and is delivered via email in late September.
• Perform a data quality review within WISEstaff using the Data Quality Dashboard to compare current year staffing totals to previous years.
• Follow-up with staff who are missing Entity IDs to ensure they have license applications in process.

Winter/Spring (January - March)

• Provide support to the district WISEstaff contact in reviewing the preliminary license audit results. Work with staff who are improperly licensed for their assignments to update licenses and/or update assignments prior to the final snapshot on the fourth Tuesday of March.
• Utilize WISEstaff Data Quality Dashboard to perform data quality review; compare staffing totals for the current year to previous years.
• Review the Admin Salary/Fringe Report in WISEstaff prior to the final certification deadline (fourth Tuesday in March) to confirm salary and fringe benefit amounts for administrative staff which will be published in Public Staff Reports in April. To ensure that your LEAs data is of the highest quality, it is imperative that administrators review the WISEstaff data prior to the final certification.

Summer

• Review final licensing audit results to identify staff with audit errors; work to have all staff properly licensed for their assignments for the next school year.
• Ensure your district’s source system for staffing information is updated throughout the summer as staff leave and are hired.
• Review the DPI Public Staff Reports site to compare your district to other districts, including year-over-year staffing and salary trends.
• Ensure any staff who will be new users of WISEstaff for the upcoming school year are given access to WISEstaff training opportunities: WISEstaff events (including the WISEstaff weekly user group calls) and the WISEstaff: Info, Help and User Guide page.