Information regarding change in special education snapshot date from December 1 to October 1 beginning in 2008-09

This email was sent to: Approved Private schools for students with disabilities, State-supported schools and Charter Schools on September 18, 2008. It contains information regarding change in special education snapshot date from December 1 to October 1 beginning in 2008-09 school year.

This is let you know that the Department has changed its special education child count date from December 1 to the first Wednesday in October, beginning this year. The first Wednesday in October in the 2008-09 school year is on October 1, 2008. All school districts, State agencies, State-operated schools, private schools and Special Act schools that provide special education services to students pursuant to Article 81 have already been notified of this change in July. They are responsible for submitting data to the State on the numbers of preschool and school age students with disabilities for whom they have Committee on Preschool Special Education (CPSE) or Committee on Special Education (CSE) responsibility and who are provided special education services on October 1, 2008. These schools will be reporting these data at the individual student level through the Student Information Repository System (SIRS) between October 22, 2008 and December 24, 2008. They will need to certify these data as complete and accurate within the same time period but by no later than December 24, 2008.

This change in the child count date has the following implications for your program:

You will need to complete the SEDCAR-1 form by March 3, 2009 to request a vendor funding amount under IDEA (Section 611 and Section 619) based on the number of preschool and school age students with disabilities who are enrolled in your program and receiving special education services as of October 1, 2008, not December 1, 2008. This request for vendor funding amount will result in the amount of IDEA funds that are provided to your program for the 2009-10 school year. As in the past, the Department will post the child counts and allocation amounts that will be used to determine a minimum proportionate amount you can anticipate receiving from each school district on the Department's website at: https://www.p12.nysed.gov/sedcar/federal.htm. This posting is anticipated to occur in May or June 2009.

Since a set amount of a school district's allocation under IDEA (Section 611 and 619) must be distributed proportionately to all approved special education program vendors and programs, it is likely there will be a change in the amount you will receive on a per-pupil basis as well as in the total amount for the 2009-10 school year.

Steps you should take:

A contact person in your program has a user name and password to the PD system, which is found at http://pd.nysed.gov/. This person will be able to see under the 2008-09 school year, the number of preschool children with disabilities (in VR7 report) and the number of school age students with disabilities (in the VR9 report) that are reported by each school district as enrolled in your program on October 1, 2008. Please work with each school district to let them know who is enrolled in your program on October 1, 2008 and check that the correct number of students appear in the respective districts' reports. If you do not see the correct number of students in the school districts' reports, please contact the school districts immediately. You may want to consider sending each resident school district a list of preschool and school age students with disabilities who are enrolled in your program on October 1, 2008 or for whom you are the coordinating service provider by October 22, 2008. This action may assist school districts to accurately include your program as the building of enrollment on the student's record.

We will update the SEDCAR website at https://www.p12.nysed.gov/sedcar/ to include information you need to report special education data to the Department for the 2008-09 school year and we will notify you when this is completed. Please note that your programs will be required to provide the PD-6 (Special Education Personnel employed- at or around October 1, 2008) to the Department and the SEDCAR-1 form to each school district of residence. These documents will be posted on our website soon.