Family & Community Special Communities
Special Education

Memorandum on Providing Data for Private School Students

The purpose of this memorandum is to outline the data reporting requirements for private school students initially presented in the Administrative Advisory SPED 2007-2 ( http://www.doe.mass.edu/sped/advisories/07_2.html) posted on May 4, 2007. Additionally, data reporting for private school students evaluated by districts, but found ineligible for special education services is clarified. Section III(I) of Advisory 2007-2, originally detailing how to ensure an accurate count of eligible parentally placed private school students, has been revised to reflect solely a reference to this reissued memorandum.

The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education requires that districts report the number of eligible private school students for whom they are providing special education and related services through SIMS. This includes eligible non-Massachusetts residents attending private school in Massachusetts. The information reported through SIMS is used in part to calculate the Federal Part B grants to the local districts. To ensure accuracy in SIMS, beginning in 2007-8, for private school students found eligible and receiving services, it is important that these students are reported using the following coding:

• Obtain a SASID for any private school student found eligible for special education services and who is receiving services from the public school district, regardless of whether the student is a Massachusetts resident or a resident of another state.
• Use DOE11 (Reason for Reporting) and choose "01" which identifies the student as a resident of the district (for Massachusetts students) or as receiving services from the district (for out-of-state students).
• Use DOE12 (Enrollment Status) and choose "40" for all parentally-placed private school students, indicating they are not enrolled in the public school district, but are receiving special education services from the district.
• Use DOE14 (City/Town of Residence) to identify the town of residence of all Massachusetts students and use "888" to identify all students from out-of-state.
• Use DOE15 (School Identification Number) to enter the appropriate private school code to indicate the private school the student is attending.
• Use DOE32 or DOE34 (Special Education Placement) to indicate the closest equivalent placement considering the special education services in addition to the overall private school services.
• Use DOE40 to indicate special education evaluation results that occur during the school year reporting period. Please report if the district has conducted an evaluation (or considered an evaluation from another state) during this school year for parentally-placed private school students.

In compliance with federal child find requirements, the districts must also provide an accurate count of private school students who are evaluated but who are found ineligible to receive special education and related services (see Examples 1 and 2 in the sample spreadsheet below) or who were found eligible and offered services but services were declined (see Example 4). Districts must also provide an accurate count of out-of-state students who are found eligible but did not receive services because the district met its proportionate share obligation (see Example 3). A separate reporting of these students will be made for both in-state and out-of-state private school students. These students do not need to have a SASID and should not be reported in SIMS. Instead, this information should be uploaded through the Special Education file exchange. A file template can be found in your district's special education file exchange folder located in the DropBox Central application.

A sample template is provided below. Each Excel spreadsheet should contain the following student information:

• student initials;
• town of residence and code (please refer to the SIMS handbook for appropriate codes: http://www.doe.mass.edu/infoservices/data/sims/ ;
• private school name and code (indicating the private school attended by the student);
• date of determination for the student (place in the appropriate column); and the code for the public school district making that determination (for your district this will simply be repeated.)

If your district does not have any private school students who meet the conditions described in this memorandum, write N/A under Student Initials.

Please note that these data should be documented throughout the school year but submitted through the Sped File Exchange folder in the ESE DropBox Central application by September 16, 2008.

For questions contact the Department's data collection office at 781-338-3282.