WISEdata Finance and WiSFiP in Wisconsin School Finance Portal

WISEdata Finance (WDF) and the WISEdata Finance (WDF) and the Wisconsin School Finance Portal Wisconsin School Finance Portal (WiSFiP) (WiSFiP) Mark Elworthy, Director Matt Baier, Fiscal Data Coordinator School Financial Services Team March 21, 2024

SFS Team Update SFS Team Update Thank yous Team Introductions State Budget Information and Process Year in Review Frequently Asked Questions in 2023-2024 Referendums Fund 80 School Funding 2023 Act 20 - Reading Work ahead

Why WISEdata Finance and WiSFiP Why WISEdata Finance and WiSFiP Transparency and improved access to data Updated processes Real-time information Comparability: LEAs and States Reduction of the potential of errors in data entry Reports for LEAs Supporting LEAs

Brought To You By: Brought To You By: Wisconsin State Longitudinal Data System (SLDS) Grants Special thanks to the Applications Development and Management team, the WISEdata Collections Development team, and the School Financial Services team.

What is WISEdata Finance? DPI s new secure application to accept the submission of financial data from LEAs financial systems Data is sent directly to WISEdata Finance (WDF) via the Ed-Fi API from the LEA s system, just as student data is sent directly from the LEA s Student Information System (SIS) Financial data is collected to meet reporting requirements and calculate state aid payments.

What is WISEdata Finance? LEAs use finance vendors pull the current Wisconsin Uniform Financial Accounting Requirements (WUFAR) Chart of Accounts (COA) from DPI District crosswalks ledger to a Local COA in WUFAR and pushes data to WDF The local detail COA rolls up to the required DPI COA level District pushes financial data as three sets of data: Local Accounts, Budget Amounts and Actual Amounts

Mindset Shift: WISEdata Finance Mindset Shift: WISEdata Finance Data submissions in WISEdata Finance are point-in-time looks, and it helps to think about data validations more as bringing issues to your attention than giving you a list of errors to clear Doing the report will mean pushing clean data Fixing your books and pushing that data to WDF is how you fix your reporting

Dramatic Transition Dramatic Transition What do all of these things have in common? The Wisconsin Uniform Financial Accounting Requirements. WUFAR (pronounced wuh-fer)

WUFAR is KEY WUFAR is KEY Simplified and flexible chart of accounts - ensures adherence to state and federal financial reporting requirements, and gives LEAs the ability to segregate and group accounts. Revisions to WUFAR are done on at least a yearly basis to address needed changes, fix errors, or adhere to requirements under GAAP and GASB. DPI Chart of Accounts integrated by the vendor. Ensure your local accounts account for changes to WUFAR and the DPI COA so accounts roll up correctly.

Chart of Accounts Vendors mapped the LEA s detailed accounts to a general umbrella DPI account - WISEdata Finance displays both the DPI account and the local detailed account. Local Account DPI Account Budget Actual 27E-100-411-152000-347 27E-100-410-152000-000 $1,500.00 $1,292.13 27E-100-412-158000-019 27E-100-410-158000-000 $5,000.00 $2,563.00 By using the mapping methodology, DPI no longer has to create hundreds of accounts every time a new grant is created. By collecting the Local Account, DPI s program areas have access to the level of detail necessary to determine compliance with Federal grant regulations.

Questions Questions

Validations Validations - - Tools to Confirm Data Tools to Confirm Data Two levels of validation rules at work: Level 1 (L1) validations reject s LEA data before it can be stored in our data warehouse. Validation message are triggered when data is pushed to DPI. Level 2 (L2) validations are run on data saved into the data warehouse (have passed L1 validations). These validations trigger based on data format issues or for specific fiscal criteria.

Validations Updates Validations Updates Our areas of focus concerning validations in WISEdata Finance: Updated validations to allow a de minimis amount (less than a dollar) before triggering Determining timeline for activating budget/actual validations through fiscal year Building more comprehensive views of L1 validation data Adding additional validations as needs identified

Addenda Addenda Reporting addenda to collect additional information based on accounts and amounts triggered within WISEdata Finance. Required responses collected through WDF and viewable in the WiSFiP Reports Building addenda into WDF for Common School Fund / OPEB contributions

New Process New Process - - Financial Transparency Financial Transparency We recommend LEAs push financial data to WISEdata Finance at least monthly, suggested as a task after the monthly bank reconciliation Set up a scheduled job to push data if vendor offers the functionality

What Have We Learned? Questions? What Have We Learned? Questions?

WISEdata Finance WISEdata Finance - - FY 2022 FY 2022- -23 23 Continuing to work with small number of districts to complete Annual Report and Audited Financials Issues in Aid Certification/Annual Report transition varied from needing to update WUFAR COA, general accounting, and vendor integration. Special Education reporting completed through the PI- 1505-SE Tax Levies, Debt Schedules, and Referenda moved to WiSFiP ESSA School Level Reporting updated to utilize WDF data

WISEdata Finance WISEdata Finance - - FY 2023 FY 2023- -24 24 Complete submission of the Budget Report Reporting Referenda for 2024 Updates to Annual Report to collect Fund Balances including Debt Balances Additional addenda in WDF for Common School Fund / OPEB Special Education Annual Report transition Transition additional SAFR reports to WiSFiP

Financial Reporting Development Timeline Year 2 of Pupil Count Pilot program ESSA School-Level Reporting Special Education Annual Report (replace the PI-1505-SE) Public Financial Dashboard Transitioning Existing SAFR reports to WiSFiP Internal Modules for Aid Runs/Revenue Limits/Reporting Ongoing Maintenance and Enhancements

Referenda Reporting Referenda reported in WiSFiP for 2023-24 forward

Referenda Reporting Report referenda results after election date Referenda information posted on DPI website

School-Level Reporting After some delay, we have opened the School-Level Reporting module in WiSFiP for 2022-23. The report utilizes your financial data to determine district- level vs. school-level (by school) and federal vs. state/local expenditures LEAs provide data to define Location and Project Codes Allows for much more accurate and streamlined federal reporting

Special Education Annual Report Developing the Special Education Annual Report for 2023-24 DPI is auditing, with stakeholder input, the Fund 27 Chart of Accounts as part of the next WUFAR revision A majority of the functionality needed to transition this report already exists. LEAs are already pushing local Fund 27 accounts to DPI Creating additional L2 validations in WDF to ensure proper Project Code coding for Fund 27

Special Education Annual Report Beyond your Fund 27 actual accounts by Project, the report will include: Addenda to track SPED grant payments into and out of the LEA Validations to ensure school mental health personnel costs meet proration requirements from Act 221 Reports detailing aid estimates, grant reconciliation, year-to- year comparisons

WISEgrants WISEgrants - - IDEA MOE IDEA MOE WISEgrants IDEA Maintenance of Effort module updated for 2021-22 Eligibility - Budget information necessary for IDEA MOE Eligibility is being pulled from WISEdata Finance. Compliance - Updated to pull Actual amounts from WISEdata Finance. We have updated the MOE module and technical assistance to reflect these changes. Compliance Data will pull in most recent Actual data. Compliance tests will not be completely relevant until the fiscal year is closed and full Actual data is present.

WiSFiP Development Timeline (SAFR reports) Budget Report (replaced the PI-1504) Tax Levies Reporting (replacing the PI-401 and Tax Levy Certification via PI-1508) Annual/Actual (replacing the PI-1505) Special Education Actual (replacing the PI-1505-SE) Pupil Count Report (replacing the PI-1563 in 2025-26) Phase 2 Pilot (2023-2024) Dual Reporting with PI-1563 (2024-2025)

Wisconsin School Finance Portal WiSFiP is the platform that will house all School Finance Reporting going forward.

Questions Questions

Pupil Membership Count 2023 Pupil Membership Count 2023- -24 24 Official reporting will occur via the PI-1563 in SAFR 2nd pilot year with data reporting through WiSFiP Data quality issues should be addressed in source system and data should be submitted to WiSFiP

Why the Pilot Project? To ensure that all the data elements in WISEdata are aligned with the Membership Pupil Count reporting requirements To provide LEAs an opportunity to compare systems To provide SIS vendors an opportunity for their LEAs to use their product and provide feedback To provide DPI feedback on the WiSFiP interface and usability

How Does the Pupil Count Module in WiSFiP Work? Student Information System (SIS) LEA enters data into the SIS WISEdata Ed-Fi API Data Consumption & L1 validation WISEdata Ed-Fi API LEA may continue to update data post deadline, but not guaranteed to be reflected in outputs No WISEdata Portal Yes Count Date Deadline ? SFS Outputs LEA uses WISEdata Portal to review data and validation results to fix data in the SIS. Pupil Count Module in WiSFiP WISEdata Ed-Fi API LEA goes back to the SIS to make changes and re-submits data to WISEdata Portal WISEdata Ed-Fi API Calculations to pre-populate membership pupil count data in WiSFiP - LEA previews the staged* data, then publishes the data which becomes the current data in WiSFiP. - LEA enters some data manually into the Pupil Count Module *Before publishing data to Pupil Count Module, data is staged. 31

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The Additions screen includes students who are 3 yr-old not SPED, students enrolled in title I funded program, SPED birth -2 program, and others are not reported to WISEdata, but are required for membership reporting. Intra 220 is only applicable for MPS. This data is not coming from WDP; therefore, LEAs will have to manually enter the WISEids or Local Person IDs. Make sure duplicates are not submitted in manual entry. If WISEid doesn't exist, then provide the local person id 33

The Summary page displays pupil count by program categories. The summary count is the head count. All the student counts under part 1 (students I am counting ) + Resident Chapter 220 + Intra 220 counts are summed up to total pupil count. The Subtotal (rounded FTE) should match the Total in the Home screen 34

The Chapter 220 page displays students in Chapter 220 (or Interdistrict) 35

The Current Data page shows all counted students Can be exported to Excel 36

The Not Meeting Criteria page shoes students who dont meet the attendance criteria, have an overlapping enrollment, missing a required membership attribute, or includes an inappropriate membership attribute. This page allows LEAs to reconcile the actual student count in the SIS to the membership pupil count in WiSFiP. The Steps pages show the pupil count under part 1(students I am counting) & part 2 (students I am not counting). All these students meet attendance requirements for membership. 37

Paradigm Shift Current reporting (PI-1563) is manually entered through SAFR with LEAs using multiple data points, including SIS data New Pupil Count report consists primarily of SIS data submitted through WISEdata and some additional WiSFiP reporting SFS needs to develop additional reporting in WiSFiP to collect statutorily required student categories that are not collected through the SIS Due date for current reporting would require enrollment data to be submitted to WISEdata Portal before Oct 5th.

Proposed Extended Timeline July 1, 2022 June 30, 2023: Phase 1 of Pilot July 1, 2023 June 30, 2024: Phase 2 of Pilot July 1, 2024 June 30, 2025: Projected - Dual Reporting between PI- 1563 and WiSFiP Pupil Count module July 1, 2025 June 30, 2026: Projected - PI-1563 retired and collection through WiSFiP Pupil Count module and additional WiSFiP reporting

Available Resources Data Element Pages: Enrollment type Residency status Full time equivalency Part time instructional minutes Count date name Programs Other Data Pages: Pupil count pilot program introduction Membership Students receiving off-site services Students taking a limited number of classes in another school/district Pupil Count PI-1563 User Guide for Requesting Access

Questions Questions

Three Main Messages Three Main Messages 1. WDF and WiSFiP - LEA s financial ledger (the local books ) pushed to WDF must be consistent with WUFAR accounting and the DPI Chart of Accounts to avoid WISEdata Finance reporting quality issues 2. WDF and WiSFiP - We recommend LEAs push financial data to WISEdata Finance at least monthly, suggested as a task after the monthly bank reconciliation 3. Student Pilot - New Pupil Count report consists primarily of SIS data submitted through WISEdata