Attendance and Membership

MASE 2025

Welcome

All about me

• I’ve been in EC for nearly 40 years
• I have been an EC, ECSE, and ECFE teacher. I have been in combined ECSE/EC leadership for 13 years.
• I am not a fiscal expert or accountant

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Who is in the room

Directors, ECSE folks, Coordinators, Due Process leads, Related Services, Jack of all trades?

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Raise your hand

If you already knew that ECSE students generate general education revenue?

If you know what system your district uses to keep track?

If you know who enters the information into MARSS at the end of the year?

If you know how much general education revenue your district brings in?

If you know where to find information?

If you have systems in place to assure you have accurate information?

If your staff is trained and understands attendance and membership?

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If you raised your hand for all of those questions, you can leave, you don’t need to be here!

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Attendance and Membership simplified

Membership ins the number of hours the child is schedule to attend regular education programming and receive services. Membership is “kid time”. General education revenu used to support students in preschool classrooms, assists in the cross-subsidy in special education

Attendance is the number of times the student attended, when scheduled. Attendance = membership minus absence

Special Education Service hours generate State Aid for Special Education Personnel= used to pay the staff working with children

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Information can be found in MARSS Procedure 6 manual (in materials for this presentation)

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How does it work

Staff report attendance, membership and Special Education service hours to MDE via MARRS

Membership includes time where district resources are expended + indirect

Evaluation also generates ADM

Districts are paid per ADM (Average Daily Membership)

ADM per district is variable; example: Wayzata is $10,000 per 1.0 ADM

Minimum for ECSE students is a .28 ADM

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Let’s find the money

Go to MDE, navigate to MFR reports

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How is ADM generated?

This depends on how your team is collecting the information:

1. SpEd Forms attendance and membership documenting individual appointments
2. SpEd Forms updated service grid version
3. Other, some districts use a spreadsheet

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Things to think about….

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1. Evaluation status: these kiddos generate ADM regardless of eligibility
2. Attendance and membership should either match or attendance could be lower
3. If there is a MARSS change, the student will have multiple lines
4. How much time/ADM is generated by evaluation
5. Is your data/information accurate?
6. Have your staff reconciled?

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Other funding sources for ECSE

State Special Education funding

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Federal Basic Allocation (FIN 420)

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Third Party Billing

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Compensatory

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How do we get to these numbers

The following slides show scenarios on how ECSE ADM is calculated.

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Understanding how the revenue is generated can help assure accuracy

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Staff need to understand in order to enter information correctly into whatever system you are using to collect the data.

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Majority of your B-3 students will generate the base .28 ADM

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For 3-5 year olds intensity matches ADM

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Example: Home visiting

Juan is a 23 month old boy identified with developmental delays. Juan’s family receives early intervention services through an IFSP to address their priorities of Juan responding more consistently to his parents, walking and letting his parents know what he wants. The IFSP documents 26 one-hour visits from the ECSE teacher, six one-hour visits from the occupational therapist that are conducted jointly with the ECSE teacher and six one- hour visits from the speech/language pathologist, also conducted jointly with the ECSE teacher, for the fiscal year.

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Example: Home visiting

Walter is 15 months old and has Down syndrome. He attends a child care center for 30 hours weekly because his parent work outside the home. The priorities identified by his parents through the family-directed assessment cut across all developmental domains. Walter’s child care center is an active partner in his intervention. The IFSP documents 50 one-hour visits from an ECSE teacher and 20 one-hour visits from an occupational therapist to be provided within Walter’s child care setting. Five one-hour visits from the physical therapist will be provided jointly with the ECSE teacher. In addition, the ECSE teacher conducts one one-hour face-to-face session – either in person or using technology with Walter’s mother every other week (26 sessions).

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Example: Classroom at district preschool

Maya attends a school-based preschool each Monday through Thursday from 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. There are 144 instructional days according to the district’s adopted calendar. There are 20 children in her class. Six children, including Maya, have IEPs. The classroom is staffed by a regular education EC teacher and paraprofessional. An ECSE teacher is in the classroom for all of each day, dividing her time among the six eligible children according to each child’s IEP. Maya receives 30 minutes of special instruction each school day. The ECSE teacher and regular educator meet 10 times each year for 30 minutes to plan to meet Maya’s needs. This time is documented in her IEP. Maya’s IEP team addressed extended school year and determined that ESY was not necessary for Maya at this time.

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Example: Child in community placement not paid from district

Tanisha is 3 years old and attends the child care program affiliated with her family church. Her parents declined the school-based placement option initially proposed by her IEP team. The team then proposed to embed services into the private program that was her parents’ choice. She is there from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. five days a week. Tanisha has attended this center since she was 14 months old. While in child care Tanisha receives one hour of special instruction weekly throughout the school year (40 sessions) from an ECSE teacher. An OT and speech/language pathologist each make a quarterly one hour visit to monitor Tanisha’s progress on her IEP goals, contribute to ongoing assessment and observe Tanisha within her environment in order to make recommendations to the ECSE teacher. The three professionals consult together quarterly for one hour to plan on behalf of Tanisha.

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Using SpEd Forms to document

If your district uses SpEd forms you can also use it to document attendance and membership.

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Last summer SpEd Forms released a new way to collect attendance and membership where it is calculated from the service grid.

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Other tips/tricks

Staff must choose the preschool placement and update it as things change

The calendar in admin preferences needs to be connected to each class

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Birth to three and student seen in community placements need to document individual appointments in attendance

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How to set up preschool placements

Go to Admin preferences

Select schools

Choose district from dropdown list

Choose +add

Make sure to give a fake school number and check the preschool placement box

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Once set up you would only need to track absences

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Running reports

Go to Admin reporting

GenEd Forms

#4 preschool placement hours

Choose district, every student who has been MARSS ended will pull into the report

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The math behind the scenes

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Does intensity matter?

How to use attendance and membership real life example:

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Contact information

I am willing to do district trainings as a consultant.

Here is my website and contact information

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How to document in SpEd Forms

1.Log into SpEd Forms

2.Choose the student you want to work with

3.Go to the forms menu

4.Then in the enrollment and attendance folder find attendance

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Documentation in SpEd Forms

Choose the first day of attendance you want to enter; example Wednesday September 6th. Add a new attendance record

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Attendance and membership roles

ECSE teacher:

Add: Classroom placement

Direct and indirect that happen within the classroom

SLP/OT/PT/SSW

Add: Add their own direct and indirect services that happen in the classroom

Add attendance and membership if it happens outside of preschool class

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Example ECSE

Select the days that these services happen, M/W/F

Only do so if the indirect and direct are done 3X per week, you can quickly check the service grid- the blue link will take you there.

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With related service

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Duplicate

Once you have the grid filled out, duplicate the record for all school days.

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Duplicating

If a student leaves, you will need to go back into the record and delete anything after the date they left.

Consider how much you want to duplicate

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If the IEP changes, you will need to update the record after the change.

Consider duplicating up to the annual IEP date.

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Home visiting is difficult to duplicate, unless you have a very regular schedule

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Home visiting option single visit

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Home visiting co-visit

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Absences

Whenever an absence happens, you will update that dates record to say absence instead of attendance.

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Coming soon….

In July SpEd Forms will be doing a major update to attendance and membership.

All of the information will calculate from the service grid. Accurate service grids will be imperative

B-2 home based and itinerant services will need to continue as before

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Training will be available from SpEd Forms by way of video, Thursday’s at Three, and direct communication.

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