Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 11:07 AM To – District Administrators and Open Enrollment Coordinators From – Mary Jo Cleaver, Open Enrollment Consultant Subject – OPAL “Rollover” for 2011-12 School Year OPAL has “rolled over” for the 2011-12 school year. NOTE: The instructions below refer to the default years for the Students and Applications tabs. At the present time, OPAL still defaults to the 2010-11 school year. We are working on that. In the meantime, you can select the 2011-12 school year to view and work with 2011-12 students records. ------------------ When you click on the Students tab or any sub-tab under Students, the default year will be 2011-12. On the Applications tab, the default year will be 2012-13 (therefore, the page will be empty). If you need to work with applications, you will need to change the school year to 2011-12. The Actively Open Enrolled list will be empty. The All Students List will contain the names of all students who were open enrolled at the end of the 2010-11 school year (except for seniors) PLUS all students who applied for open enrollment for the 2011-12 school year. Students are added to the Actively Open Enrolled list when the nonresident district reports them as open enrolled on the third Friday in September. You can get a head start on this by indicating “not open enrolled,” for those students who you know will not be attending your district under open enrollment. However, you should not begin entering students as open enrolled until you are doing your 3rd Friday counts. CHANGES OF RESIDENT DISTRICT: Be sure to compare each student’s address in OPAL with the address reported by the parent for this school year. If the address is different, enter the new address in OPAL. If the resident school district is different than that shown in OPAL, contact me or Merry to correct it. You cannot change a resident district for the current school year. It is extremely important to verify each open enrolled student’s address and resident district (both the resident and nonresident districts should do this). Many of the errors discovered later in the year could/should have been caught in September. NONRESIDENT DISTRICTS: To report a student as open enrolled or not open enrolled, click on the 3rd Friday in September list. This will contain the names of all students on the All Students list. If a student was a senior last year, the student will have been removed from the list. If the student did not graduate and will still be open enrolled, click on the Returns Tab. Find the student’s name and click on Retain. This will put the student back into the All Students list. You will still need to go to the 3rd Friday in September list and report the student as open enrolled. Once a student has been reported as open enrolled, you should go into the Special Ed list. This will contain only the names of students reported as open enrolled. Most students will already have a sped or not sped entry. Check the entry for each student to be sure it is correct and change it, if necessary. A number of students may have changed from sped to not sped in 2010-11 or vice versa. This is the time to make that entry, if you did not do so last year. If you are a school district with a virtual charter school, you must also make entries on the Virtual Tab. For each student, indicate Attending VCS or Not Attending VCS. Once you have completed the third Friday reporting, there should not be any students with a “No Answer” entry. This information must be provided even though there is no longer a limit on the number of students who may attend virtual charter schools under open enrollment. RESIDENT DISTRICTS: Once the nonresident district has made its entries, you must go into the 3rd Friday list and agree or disagree. If you disagree with the nonresident district’s entry, OPAL will send an email to the nonresident district. It is then up to the districts to resolve the issue and make the correct entry(s) in OPAL. The resident district cannot make an entry in the 3rd Friday list until the nonresident district has made its entry. If the radio buttons are grayed out, it means the nonresident district has not yet made its entry. WORKING WITH THE LISTS: The list formats have some benefits and some drawbacks. The biggest benefit is that you can make multiple entries relatively quickly and easily. The biggest drawback is that OPAL does not send emails every time a student’s entry is entered or changed. (The only emails OPAL sends for the lists are when the resident district disagrees). Therefore, the resident district must monitor this information regularly until the lists are frozen. To indicate a student is open enrolled, the nonresident district must click on the radio button labeled “Open- Enrolled at [nonresident district name]. To indicate that the student is not open enrolled, click on the button labeled “Not Open-Enrolled at [nonresident district name]. You can work with one page at a time. Once your entries are made for a page, BE SURE TO SAVE. There are some tools that can make this more efficient. You can filter by grade, if you wish. You can search for an individual student or for all students from (or to) a particular school district. You can use the “Mark All Open Enrolled” or “Mark All Not Open Enrolled” buttons. For example, if most students on the page are open enrolled, click on the “Mark All Open-Enrolled” button. Then go back and correct the ones that are not open enrolled. Or vice versa. BE SURE TO SAVE. These same strategies work for the resident district to agree or disagree with the nonresident district. You can “Agree with All,” and then change individually any you do not agree with. However, please DO NOT indicate “Disagree with All” unless you really do disagree with all. Clicking on Disagree with All will send a disagreement email for each student on the list. The lists will only be active through September 25. After that time, the lists will be frozen. This does not mean the data are frozen, only that you cannot use the list. You will have to make individual student entries (which can take a very long time, if you have a lot of entries to make.) WORKING WITH INDIVIDUAL STUDENT RECORDS To work with an individual student record, click on the student’s name (from either the All Students list or the Actively Open Enrolled list). Click on the appropriate change tab, click on edit, enter the new information and SAVE. This will send an email to the other district, which must approve the change before OPAL will be updated. As always, if you have any questions, please contact me, or Merry Larsen (merry.larsen@dpi.wi.gov, 608-266- 2146). Mary Jo Cleaver Public School Open Enrollment Consultant Department of Public Instruction 608-267-9101 or toll-free 888-245-2732 fax: 608-267-9207 email: maryjo.cleaver@dpi.wi.gov website: http://dpi.wi.gov/sms/psctoc.html