Special Education

By Andrea Kunkel, ODSS Executive Director/CCOSA General Counsel and Ginger Elliott-Teague, PhD., OSDE

For special education purposes, Child Count is a count of students enrolled in Local Education Agencies and on an IEP as of October 1 of the fiscal year. In addition to identifying children currently served, the count collects primary, secondary and suspected disabilities, as appropriate; child-level least restrictive environments and early childhood environments; and demographics, including race and ethnicity. It serves two purposes: to determine state and federal aid and to measure several annual accountability indicators.

Because accountability and money are involved, it’s critical that districts provide quality child count data. How?

In every record in the OK EdPlan, the student must have:

■ a valid STN

■ finalized eligibility and IEP events

■ an educational environment code

■ complete disability category information (primary, suspected, etc.) and related services

■ a valid grade code

■ valid race & ethnicity entries

■ EL status

■ a date of birth

■ a gender

■ an accredited site code and

■ a valid enrollment status

■ Students in Developmental Delay (DD) districts (who are categorized as DD) must have a finalized eligibility document in EdPlan and a suspected disability on their current MEEGS

■ No students age 10 or greater can have a disability category of DD

■ Students with grade PK must have an updated early childhood environment recorded

■ Students no longer present in any district must be exited in EdPlan to match the Student Information System (SIS) un-enrollment date and reason

■ Every student must have the correct enrollment status selected on their personal page — Public School, Residential Facility, Correctional Facility, Home/ Hospital, Separate School, or Private School

■ Students must be enrolled in the district SIS with the appropriate code (including 3 and 4 year olds being served on IEPs), and

■ All duplicate records must be resolved.

How can your district prepare to provide quality child count data?

First, have appropriate personnel participate in OSDE’s annual child count training and continue the work to complete and correct incomplete and inaccurate information on EdPlan well before October 1, 2021. If a district doesn’t have a student’s IEP finalized by October 1, then the student will not be included in the FY22 SPED child count. Remember, if a district isn’t able to resolve an error prior to October 1, it can still be corrected before the end of the day on October 15 – the day by which the superintendent must certify the district’s data for it to be considered timely. If the error isn’t resolved by that time, the child will not be counted. So, to ensure that every child is counted, participate in training, continue working on your data, get your IEPs completed and get help from OSDE’s Special Education Services staff to resolve lingering errors. ■