Sent:	Thursday, February 02, 2012 1:08 PM

To - District Administrators and Open Enrollment Coordinators

From - Mary Jo Cleaver, Open Enrollment Consultant

Subject - Information on the Extended Application Period and Exceptions to the 
Open Enrollment Application Period

On February 1, the governor signed 2011 Wisconsin Act 114 (Senate Bill 2).   
The new law will be published on February 15 and will be effective on February 
16.   You may view and download Act 114 at 
https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/2011/related/acts/114.  

Attached to this email is a description of each of the major changes to the 
open enrollment law in Act 114 concerning  the extended application period and 
exceptions to the application period.  

We are working to develop procedures to implement this new law as soon as 
possible.  

EXTENDED APPLICATION PERIOD

Obviously, the extended application period will be easier to administer, since 
it follows the same application procedure, but with different dates.  However, 
there are also some changes in how applications are handled, so please review 
the attached document carefully to understand what these changes are.   We 
know you have a lot of questions and we are working on that, but here is some 
information to get you started:

Act 114 requires school boards to determine the number of regular and special 
education spaces at the January meeting of the school board, but during 
February 2011 for 2011-12 applications.  Since both dates have passed, the 
board should establish the number of spaces at the first available board 
meeting, if it has not already done so.   

Since the application period is extended to three months, you should be able 
to get a head start on requesting records and estimating special education 
costs.   Nonresident districts can begin requesting records once an 
application is submitted and resident districts can begin sending them.    
Hopefully, this will result in smoother, more timely handling of applications 
for students with disabilities.   Act 114 requires resident districts to send 
records by May 11 and nonresident districts to send estimates by May 25 , but 
it is not necessary to wait that long.   

The online and paper applications are being revised to reflect the new 
application period.  

EXCEPTIONS TO THE APPLICATION PERIOD

There are a number of questions that arise with this new law, not the least 
being questions on timelines.   

While we are working on procedures that will enable us to implement this law 
as soon as possible; we don't yet know when parents  will be able to submit 
applications for exceptions.   Our plan is to have an online application as  
part of OPAL.   If we are unable to have an online application operational 
within a few days of the effective date of the law, we may need to initially 
implement a manual procedure.    

-----------------
Our next step is to develop procedures and a Q&A document for each of the 
changes and for making them work together.   If you have any specific 
questions you would like answered for either program, please email them to me 
and we will do our best to provide answers in upcoming informational 
materials.  

Thank you for your continued patience.  All materials produced will be place 
on the open enrollment web site at http://dpi.wi.gov/sms/oe_sb2.html. 

You can contact me at 608-267-9101 or maryjo.cleaver@dpi.wi.gov.  You can 
contact Merry Larsen at 608-266-2146 or merry.larsen@dpi.wi.gov.