Data Reporting Holiday Closures

• Data Reporting support will not be available Monday, January 20, 2025 for Martin Luther King Day.

Office Hours for 2024-2025

Data Exchanges Office Hours are available weekly on Tuesday. The session times will alternate weekly between a morning session and an afternoon session.

Access to the Office Hours Submit Question button and Office Hours Question Responses button as well as a button providing connection to the Office Hours session can be found in Knowledge Hub > Communications Hub > Upcoming Events.

Office Hours Schedule

• Tuesday, January 21, 1:00 - 2:30 pm ET, open forum

• Tuesday, January 28, 10:30 - 12:00 pm, Membership refresher - Brenda Erbse presenting

Future Enrollments and Membership Conflicts

IDOE is aware that Membership Conflicts are being created where the student is currently enrolled and attending at School A but School B has received information from a parent that after the winter break the student will be enrolled at School B. If School B enters the student in the SIS AND sends the data to DEX, a Membership Conflict will be created. There are two options for handling this situation.

1. Work with SIS vendor to determine how to prevent the future enrollment from sending to DEX.

2. It is be necessary to live with the conflict until School B entry date is reached AND School A has with drawn the student. NOTE: School A must also provide end date on the SEORA (responsibility) record.

Corrected 2025 Alt Ed Program List Posted

The 2024-2025 Approved Alternative Education Program List has been posted to DEX Knowledge Hub > School Support Hub > Reporting Guides > Alternative Education > References Alternative Education Program List

Reminder: Alternative Education Program Records

If 2024-2025 program records have already been submitted to DEX, be advised that there may have been Alternative Programs submitted that have had a program name change, or possibly in some cases the program was not renewed for this current school year. SIS vendors are aware of this concern and will work with their customers to assist with making corrections to already submitted data as needed. As has been posted in previous announcements, the 2024-2025 Alternative Program List would not be finalized and ready for submission until early to mid-November 2024. Since there have been similar concerns in previous years IDOE has worked with IDOE business owner to determine how to have the programs identified and the list available in August of each school year to avoid the same continuing issue.

Working with your vendor, please make every effort to clean up any Alternative Education program records by January 6, 2025. IDOE can provide this link that identifies which programs have had a name change or did not renew for the current school year to assist with cleanup. Be advised that on January 6, 2025, IDOE will be deleting out of the ODS any records where the incorrect program has been reported and also on this date, IDOE will no longer accept unapproved Alternative Program names. (If SIS does not delete the incorrect program record, it will be deleted by IDOE).

From Office of Technology

New! LINK: Security Coordinators asked to identify persons for the new “IEP/ILP Support” role by February 7th, 2025. 

The Indiana Department of Education is actively working with PowerSchool Special Programs on implementing Indiana’s new Individual Education Program (IEP) and Individual Learning Plan (ILP) software, Special Programs, which will roll out for the upcoming school year.  IDOE has added a new role, “IEP/ILP Support” to the LINK portal and the Data Exchange System. This role is to identify up to two individuals who will be responsible for understanding the IEP/ILP system and be the person(s) authorized to contact PowerSchool technical support when there are questions or issues.  

SIS Vendors will also be notified of this new role and we expect vendors to be able to provide these data in the 2025-2026 school year. However, as we work through the IEP/ILP transition details, we are in need of these contacts sooner so we know who to communicate with. PowerSchool will also be sending out training information to these contacts. Security Coordinators are asked to manually add these contacts within the LINK Security Portal by February 7th, 2025. Instructions are located online at https://www.in.gov/doe/it/link-initiative/ . More information will be coming regarding PowerSchool Special Programs in the coming months. Thank you for your assistance! Questions about this message may be directed to the helpdesk at https://help.doe.in.gov.  Please note: The PowerSchool Special Programs platform is not part of the PowerSchool Student Information System product which experienced a recent data breach. 

Reminder: PowerSchool Data Breach

IDOE is aware of the nationwide data breach which has impacted some PowerSchool customers in Indiana and across the country. While incident management is being handled by PowerSchool directly with their school customers, IDOE is committed to supporting affected schools by simplifying the reporting of this breach according to state statute. We appreciate your continued commitment to cybersecurity and want to make this process as seamless as possible. That is why technology leaders in affected schools will not need to fill out the typical data breach notification form on the Indiana Office of Technology’s (IOT) Local Government Services website and should instead reach out to Brad Hagg, IDOE’s Director of Educational Technology, who is coordinating information and will report this breach, on behalf of all impacted Indiana schools, to IOT. As with any data breach, impacted schools are encouraged to provide ongoing communication with parents and families as additional information becomes available. Schools should also consult with their legal counsel and notify their cybersecurity insurance provider, if applicable.

From Office of Technology

Attendance Insights Review

As we approach the mid-point of the school year, please take a look at the attendance insights dashboard to review attendance data. A couple of reminders:

• Check the Timely Submissions tab of the report to see if your school is up-to-date with submission of attendance data.

• Check on unexcused absence rates (Attendance Event Insights tab). How is your school doing with regard to habitual truancy?

• Review the projected chronic absenteeism numbers for your school (Absenteeism and Truancy Insights tab). How do these compare with last year’s numbers?

• Graduates Prepared to Succeed (GPS) updated the K-12 data metrics just prior to Thanksgiving. This included an update to the rate of students with a 94% attendance rate for 2024. Consider comparing your GPS 94% attendance rate numbers for 2024 with where you are tracking for 2025.

IDOE Data Request Process

This week, the IDOE launched a new data request process in order to provide better service.  Detailed forms are now available to data requesters tailored to the type of data being requested.  The link to the new process is available here. Contact http://help.doe.in.gov with questions.

School Health Report Reminder

School Health staff have received an email stating that the School Health Report would be accessible by December 2, 2024. Please be sure that staff needing access to the School Health Report tile in LINK have been assigned the “School Health” Staff Assignment.

Access to EdPlan Tile - Student Support Plans

New users who have the Student Support Plans role and are getting the following error

Authentication Error: ‘Either First Name and Last Name or Full name are required.’

1. Verify that the SPN is associated to the Student Support Plans classification

2. Reach out to PCG (indianaiep@pcgus.com) for assistance.  

3. Schools need to provide PCG with the User’s Name and SPN for Account Setup. 

STN Application Center Retirement

IDOE will be retiring the STN Application Center by the end of March, 2025. This system is being replaced by newer systems including Data Exchange, Ed-ID, a new Choice Voucher Application, and an EdData report called Student Data Backpack. Local data administrators should login to the STN Application Center and download any certified roster data that your school requires under Administration > Retrieve Data, as historic data will not be available via any tool in the future.