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SIS 2000+ Special Education History

Sec. 3, Enter a Student in a Program

Prerequisites:

• All Special Education programs to be used in this application must first be defined in the Special Programs Editor application, making sure that the "Special Education" attribute is set to "Yes".
• Entry and Exit codes that apply to Special Education must be associated to Special Education programs by means of a SIS 2000+ database utility (to be announced).

3.2 Select a Program to add

3.2.1 Click on the Add command button at the bottom of the main Special Education History screen. The 'Select Program' dialog box will appear (Fig. 20).


Fig. 20

3.2.2 Use the field button to drop down a list of available Special Education programs (Fig. 20). Select a program for enrollment. Click on OK to confirm, or Cancel to abort. Only programs that have been defined as 'Special Education' will appear as selections in this list.



If there is only one Special Education program defined in the system the selection screen will be bypassed and the view will advance directly to the 'General' tab (Fig. 21)


Fig. 21

3.2.3 Set the first event due date
The next prompt that appears will require the user to set a due date for the first event in the Compliance Timeline (Fig. 22). In this sample, the 'Referral' is the first step in the due process of the special education program being added. The date set here will normally determine the anchor point for calculating the due dates of the subsequent events in the Timeline. Set the date with the drop-down calendar and then press OK (or Cancel to abort).


Fig. 22

Minimum required data:
Fields that are in bold font indicate that data entry in that field is required before the program entry can be saved. Required fields are defined by the system administrator using the SIS 2000+ Database Manager application according to the needs of the district.

Fig. 23 - entry mode, first screen

3.4.1 Enter 'General' data
Use the Tab key to move from field to field. Enter data a follows:

Fig. 24 - Field labels in this form may be customized from their default names using a database utility program. For this reason the field names in this 'General' tab may not match the field names used in the summary list on the main screen.

• Referral Date (Entry Date) -

A student enters the Special Education process when he or she is referred by someone who suspects that the student may require Special Education. This date will be displayed as the Entry Date in the summary list on the main screen after this enrollment process is saved. This date can only be within the date range of the track the student is currently enrolled in. Use the drop-down calendar to enter the date.


Fig. 25 - drop-down calendar

To activate a drop-down calendar, click on the field button of either Date field. Use the small, single arrow buttons (VCR buttons) at the bottom of the calendar to navigate forward or backward to the target month. Use the double arrows to navigate to the target year. Click on the target date until it is highlighted in yellow and then click on the Select command button to post that date to the Date field, or Cancel to exit the calendar without changing the date. The calendar will close automatically after the Select command is executed. To restore today's date (System Date), activate the calendar and click on the Today command button until today's date is highlighted. Then click on the Select command button to simultaneously post the date in the field and close the calendar.

• Entry reason (Entry Code)-

Select a reason for enrollment available entries in the drop-down list.
• Classification Date (Entry Date) -

A general purpose date field that can be used according to the needs of the district. This field is not linked to any function in SIS 2000+.
• Instr(uctional) Setting -

Defines program settings outside mainstream student classroom rotation.
• Total Service Time -

Enter a numerical value representing the time the student will spend in the program. Then select a multiplier in the drop-down list to the immediate right, such as "Hours per week", "Hours Per Month", "Minutes per Day", etc.
• Status -

For a new enrollment, select 'Active'. When a student has been dismissed from this program at some future date, return to this field in the edit mode and select 'Exited' or 'Dropped'
• Dismissal Date (Exit Date) -

Enter the last day the student was enrolled in this program. This will normally not be required when adding a new program entry. Return to this field in the edit mode to enter this date when the student has finished the program. The Exit Date can be no later than the last day of the track the student is currently enrolled in.
• Dismissal Code (Exit Code) -

Enter the reason for exiting this program. This will normally not be required when adding a new program entry. Return to this field in the edit mode to enter this code when the student has finished the program.
• Handicap -

This is the "Primary Handicapping Condition" or "Primary Designation" code assigned to a student after they have been deemed eligible for Special Education. The student may not yet be deemed eligible during the initial enrollment in a program, in which case this field may be "Unset" or display a default service code. When the Primary Designation is ready to be assigned, activate the edit mode and return to the 'General' tab of any program entry (this designation is not specific to any Special Education program record - the same data will be visible in the 'General' tab of all program entries for the selected student.) If a Primary Designation has already been assigned, the service code will be displayed the Handicap field along with date of last designation in the as of field. These two fields are read-only and can only be changed via Change Primary command button. For procedures, see Sec. 4, "Assign Designations".
• Secondary -

A student may have other handicaps beside his or her Primary Designation. These are called "Secondary Handicapping Conditions" or "Secondary designations". A student can have only one Primary Designation at a given time but may have more than one Secondary designation at a time. The Secondary designations are subsets of the Primary Designation and therefore can only be assigned after the Primary Designation has been assigned. When a student is ready for Secondary designations, return to this screen in the edit mode and click on the Secondary command button to open the 'Secondary Handicaps' screen. For procedures, see Sec. 4, "Assign Designations".
• Remarks -

A text field for anecdotal comments related to this program entry.
• Last Changed By/On -

Read-only field indicating the name of the user who made the last changes to this record and the date of the last change.



Possible Program Conflicts: Conflict identifier codes may be assigned to Special Education programs when they are first defined in the Special Programs Editor. The same conflict identifier code number is assigned to all programs that are mutually exclusive (for funding purposes), that is, two programs with the same conflict identifier cannot have overlapping date ranges. Therefore, a student cannot be enrolled in both programs concurrently on any given day. See Special Programs Editor, Sec. 2, "Add a Program", Step 2.2. for more details. The date range of the enrollment period in Special Education History is determined by the Referral Date (Entry Date) and the Dismissal Date (Exit Date) fields in the 'General' sub-screen above. If the new program being added conflicts with a program already existing in the student's Special Education History, an error message will occur preventing the second program to be added or saved. The type of error message depends on several conditions, such as whether or not the conflicting program has an exit date. A Type 1 error message (Fig. 26) will occur if the new program being added is in conflict with an existing program in the student's history and the existing program has been exited (has an Exit Date). Remember that a program being added that has no Dismissal Date yet entered will have a date range that defaults from its Referral Date (Entry Date) to the last day of the track the student is enrolled in. In this case it will conflict with any other existing program in that track that shares any date after the new program was started. To avoid this conflict, make sure that a new program entry starts after all other mutually exclusive program entries have ended (in the same track). These corrective procedures will require that the user back out of the new enrollment using the Undo command, modify existing entries using the edit mode, and begin the Add process again. See Sec. 8 for instructions on activating the edit mode. Fig. 26 - sample, Type 1 A Type 2 error message (Fig. 27) occurs if the new program being added is in conflict with an existing program in the student's history and the existing program is still "open" (has no Exit Date). Remember that an existing program entry that is still open will have a date range that defaults from its Referral Date (Entry Date) to the last day of the track the student is enrolled in. Therefore, any mutually exclusive program that is added and left open (no Exit date) will automatically conflict with existing program entries that are also still open - since all open entries range to the last day of the track by default. To avoid this conflict, close the existing open programs by entering Dismissal Dates and make sure the new program being added starts after the oldest Dismissal Date (Exit date). These corrective procedures will require that the user back out of the new enrollment using the Undo command, modify existing entries using the edit mode, and begin the Add process again. See Sec. 8 for instructions on activating the edit mode. Fig. 27 - sample, Type 2 These error messages may also occur if any conflict identifier codes were changed from their initial value (via the Special Programs Editor) in such a way as to cause potential conflicts between Special Education programs already entered in Special Education History. In this case, the error message will appear the moment an attempt is made to save any editing in the Special Education History application, requiring the user to close any open enrollments so that the application can re-evaluate all date ranges. Any subsequent conflicts still existing must be resolved either by editing the conflict identifiers, removing the student from the overlapping program, or deleting one of the offending entries.

3.4.2 Enter 'Custom' data
The 'Custom' tab (Fig. 28) may show various check boxes, date boxes, and code boxes for entering data, or it may be empty. Enter appropriate data, if applicable. Return later to this screen update data in the edit mode, if required. The illustration below is just a sample of one possible group of data fields. The field names are user-defined for each special program using the Special Programs Editor (See Special Programs Editor, Sec. 3, "Define 'Custom' Fields").


Fig. 28

The lower portion of the screen contains one or two command buttons that access further information, as follows:


• User-Defined Information -

Click on this button to open a form containing additional data fields of student information relating to the special program being added (Fig. 29). The fields in this form are defined, according to the needs of the district, by the system administrator via the Database Manager utility program. This data form is optional. The button will only be visible if a form has been defined.


Fig. 29 - sample


• Bus Information -

Students in Special Education may have special requirements or restrictions for riding a school bus. Click on this button to open a form containing bus information for the selected student (Fig. 30). Check on or off the various requirements that apply to the student and enter comments in the Notes field. If the Alert field is checked, a flag will appear in the student's Student Editor record to alert the user that the student has special bus circumstances. After entering or editing data, click on Save and Return to return to close the form and return to the 'Custom' tab, or Cancel to close and return without saving.


Fig. 30

(This data is shared with the Student Editor application. It may be viewed, entered, or editing from Special Education History or the Student Editor. The font on this button will change from black to red when the form contains data within.)


3.4.3 Enter 'Prescribed Services' data

(to be announced)
Fig. 31

3.4.4 Enter 'Test History' data

(to be announced)
Fig. 32

3.4.5 Enter 'Compliance Timeline' data
The Timeline defined for the selected special education program will be referenced from the Special Programs Editor database and displayed in the 'Compliance Timeline' information screen. The due date previously set for the first event in the Timeline (Step 3.2.3) will be visible at the top of the list (Fig. 33). For instructions on maintaining the Timeline, see Sec. 7.


Fig. 33

3.6 Exit the entry mode
Click on Done to exit the entry mode and go back to the main Special Education screen. The student will now be enrolled in the program and a new entry will appear in the summary list.