COVID-19 Six Weeks Submissions, Calendars and Attendance

April 22, 2020 | PEIMS & Data Management

In this unprecedented time, schools across the nation are working to support students in a remote instructional setting. In Texas, all school classrooms must remain closed for students through the end of the 2019–20 school year. In his press conference on the state’s response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) global pandemic, the Governor directed school districts to Texas Education Agency (TEA) Commissioner Mike Morath for guidance on graduation and other operational decisions tied to the extended closure.

TEA releases new information daily as the COVID-19 response evolves, so please refer to the TEA COVID-19 webpage at https://tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/health-safety-discipline/coronavirus-covid-19-support-and-guidance for the most up to date information in the event that updates have made since the release of the information below.

Foundation School Program Six Weeks Submissions

For the remainder of the 2019-20 school year your district will not be required to submit their fifth and sixth cycle FSP six weeks submissions in the Foundation School Program Application in TEAL.

In order to submit accurate data in your Summer PEIMS submission, it is incredibly important that you still make any necessary updates to student attendance (prior to your district implementing remote instruction) and special programs data throughout the end of your school year! Charter schools will be required to report final attendance through PEIMS based on forthcoming TEA guidance.

On the TEA website, you can find further information regarding six weeks attendance and funding in the Charter Amendments & Funding Items document.

April through August FSP payments will not be impacted. State funding will continue to pay on the attendance that the March FSP payment was based on. There will be no interruption in cash flow during the school year. It’s important to note that settle-up in September may impact the overall funding.

To determine how your March FSP payment was determined, you can refer to the ADA Projection Report that can be found in the Foundation School Application in TEAL (FSP Home > Programs > Charter Schools > ADA Projection Report). TEA has used your 4th cycle attendance data (or the last six weeks cycle data that was submitted) and copied it into your 5th and 6th six-week cycles. The average is now based on all 6 six-week cycles averaged together, three of these cycles using the same attendance data.

Six Weeks Attendance Reporting Periods

In order for TEA to correctly calculate attendance data in the 19-20 summer PEIMS submission, they have asked that districts update their 4th and 5th attendance cycle dates in their Student Information System (SIS). Before making these updates please reach out to your SIS Vendor to ensure that they are ready to support these necessary updates.

4th six weeks end date needs to be changed to the last instructional day prior to your district closing for COVID related reasons.
5th six weeks need to begin on the first day your district was closed for COVID related reasons and should end when your remote instruction ends for the year (ensuring that your district has exceeded 75,600 minutes).
There will be no 6th six weeks attendance data since students will not be returning to campus for the remainder of this school year.

Student Attendance

During your district’s remote instruction period, you do not need to document student attendance. This means that your district will not be posting any student absences during the 5th Six Weeks Reporting Period. If you had any low attendance days prior to closing your school for COVID related reasons you have two options. You can create a local absence code that you have mapped to count as ‘present for funding’ purposes in your Student Information System. For students to qualify for this funded absence, your district must have been providing them remote instruction at that time.

The other option available to districts is to apply for a Low Attendance Day Waiver for the day or days prior to school closure if needed. Information regarding the low attendance day waiver can be found on the TEA website at https://tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/waivers/state-waivers/state-waiver-types-attendance. Districts or campuses can request a waiver to excuse any instructional days from ADA and FSP funding calculations that have attendance at least 10 percentage points below the last school year’s overall average attendance.

Local Calendar Days

There are different types of school days that your district may have encountered while transitioning to remote instruction. These day types are not reported in PEIMS, but you must keep local documentation describing what occurred in your district after your campus closed for COVID related reasons. These days should fit into one of the three following categories:

Closed, instructing – Campuses are closed, district is providing remote instruction to students.
Closed, preparing – Campus staff are working to prepare for remote instruction.
Closed, temporary – Campuses closed for one week or less and staff is not actively working on preparing remote instruction.

How should your Calendar Days be coded in your SIS?

Leave your remote instruction days coded as Instructional days, even if you are going to be using the missed school day waiver. This will enable you to still enroll and withdraw students during this time period. Leave the operational minutes the same as they would have been if your district was operating normally.

Bad Weather Days – these remain coded as is unless your district had already planned to use these days to make up a previously missed school day that occurred prior to your COVID school closure. If the day was already planned to be used as an instructional day, you will remove the bad weather day (non-instructional day) and you will code it as an Instructional day. Remote student instruction should now occur on this day.
Spring Break – planned days for Spring Break in the calendar remain coded as non-instructional days. Leave any additional days that may have been considered an “extended” break for students as instructional days though. Locally these days will be categorized into one of the “Closed” day categories and will be included in your missed school day waiver.
Holidays – already planned holidays that occur during your school COVID closure remain as Holidays. Remote student instruction will not occur on these days.
Staff Development Days – these days remain coded as non-instructional staff days. Minutes can be associated with these days if your district has the approved Staff Development Waiver and has not already exceeded the allowable 2100 minutes.

Missed School Day Waiver

If you are offering remote instruction to your students, then you must apply for the Missed School Day Waiver to ensure your district meets the 75,600 minimum minute requirement for full ADA funding. The missed school day waiver will be a single waiver that includes of all of the days your district was closed including “Closing, instructing,” “Closed, preparing,” and “Closed, temporary” days.

The first step in this process is for your district should notify TEA of its closure at disasterinfo@tea.texas.gov as soon as a possible. The district will still need to file the official waiver, resolution, and attestation through the normal waiver application process.
The Missed School Day waiver requires board approval. The board must approval all dates that your campus was closed. Now that it has been determined that no district will return to in-person instruction this school year, your board can approve this waiver at any time. Just be sure that all school closure days are included in your request and that your 2019-20 school year calendar meets the 75,600 minimum minute requirement for full ADA funding.
Your district must wait until you have completed your 2019-20 school year prior to submitting your waiver request in the Waivers application in TEAL. Even though you can request your board approval at this time, the Missed School Day Waiver cannot be submitted for future dates in the Waivers application. If your last day of remote instruction school is May, 22nd then you must wait until after this date to complete the waivers submission process to TEA.
This “Instructional Continuity Attestation While Closed ” form should be submitted along with the Missed School Day Waiver attesting to the fact that your district is offering remote instruction to students during the school closure period. TEA will be comparing your attestation letter dates to your 5th six weeks cycle dates to ensure that these match.

The deadline to submit the Missed School Day Waiver, complete with board approval documentation and attestation form to TEA is June 18, 2020. Please note that if you make any changes to your instructional calendar your last day of school for the 2019-20 school year cannot be prior to May 15th, 2020.

Please continue to monitor the frequently released updates on the TEA COVID-19 webpage at https://tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/health-safety-discipline/coronavirus-covid-19-support-and-guidance. There is a lot of information on this site so for easy access below are the links to some of the correspondence referred to in this TIP.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please reach out to the Charter School Success PEIMS director, Laura Jandle, at ljandle@charterschoolsuccess.com.