Author Archives: Matt Moody

On Saturday, July 8th, 2023, an update will be posted to all Wisconsin SpEd Forms sites. The update will include the changes listed below:

IEP

1.The empty date field that appears on the printed and finalized version of the Extended School Year (I-11) has been removed.

(Requested by: Lauren Miller, Superior School District #54210)

ER

1. Bateria IV-Cognitive and Bateria IV-Achievement tests have been added to the SpEd Forms test library. 

(Requested by: Wendy Van Batavia, Midwest Special Education Cooperative #54329)

2. The evaluation report criteria and the generic ER template have been updated with the new criteria from WI DPI.

(Requested by: SpEd Forms #54425)

Other forms and logs

1.The Communication Log has been recently updated, and an additional comment box has been added. 

(Requested by: Ariel Larpenteur, Community Of Peace Academy #53661)

2. “End request” has been added to the options on the Emergency health/transportation information form. 

(Requested by: Katie Wilder, Mounds View Public Schools #50496)

3. A recent RE-3 form will display a green check instead of the stop sign along with a note reading “Notice of Agreement that a 3 Year Reevaluation is Not Needed was sent on [date]” in the pop-up info on the SpEd Dashboard.

(Requested by: Lauren Miller, Superior School District #54380)

Reports

1. A link to the Youtube tutorial on Instructional days has been added on the Admin reporting Instructional days page.

(Requested by: SpEd Forms #DE-3871)

2.0

1. IE-2 Initial Evaluation: No Additional Assessments Needed, IE-3 Initial Evaluation: Notice and Consent Regarding Need to Conduct Additional Assessments, Parental consent Section 504 evaluation, ER-3 Evaluation Report: Documentation for Determining Braille Needs for a Child with a Visual Impairment, ED-1 Existing Data Review to Determine if Additional Assessments or Evaluation Materials are Needed, ER-4 Notice of IEP Team Findings That Child is Not a Child With a Disability, R-1 Referral for Special Education and Related Services, ER-2-A Required Documentation for SLD – Initial, RE-1 Notice of Reevaluation, RE-2 Notice of Agreement to Conduct a Reevaluation More Than Once a Year and the Evaluation Report has been converted to v2.

(Requested by: SpEd Forms, DE-3795, DE-3809, DE-3785, DE-3833, DE-3793, DE-3839, DE-3787, DE-3832, DE-3843, DE-3846, DE-3956)

System

1. A “SIS School ID” field has been added to the Admin School setup page, which will be editable. The current “School ID” has been changed to read-only.

(Requested by: SpEd Forms #DE-3896)

2. A change was made to ensure when sending a student with electronically signed documents to another server, only the original document is included when copied to the new server. 

(Requested by: SpEd Forms #DE-3957)

Announcements

IMPORTANT: New “Active” and “Special education” checkboxes have been added on the student setup page. These checkboxes will now determine if the student record is active or inactive.  The evaluation status (SEES) and the status end code dropdowns will remain but will no longer determine if the student is active or inactive.  The new checkboxes will be utilized throughout the system to establish student status, including on student lists, dashboards and reports. Here is a short video indicating the changes:

On Saturday, July 8th, 2023, an update will be posted to all Wisconsin SpEd Forms sites. The update will include the fixes listed below:

IEP

1. A change was made to ensure margins on the IEP print accurately when a Draft copy is printed. 

(Requested by: Lauren Miller, Superior School District #54000)

2. Made a change to display the IEP Meeting and Amended Date at the top of each page on the IEP.

(Requested by Lauren Miller, Superior School District #54146)

3. Data entered for “Range” and “Minutes Total” on the I-11 Extended School Year form, section III, titled “Related Services Needed to Benefit from Special Education” will now be retained after saving.

(Requested by: Lauren Miller, Superior School District #54152)

ER

1. Margins at the bottom printed pages in the Evaluation report have been adjusted.

(Requested by: Konnie Beck, Worthington Schools #53869)

System

1. The functionality of the “Include page numbers” checkbox on the finalization page of all forms has been improved so that when it is unchecked, the page numbers on the form are now hidden upon finalizing.

(Requested by: Linda Freemark, Prior Lake-Savage Area Schools #53877)

2. Made a change so that when the separate households feature is activated on a student’s setup page, the printed working copies will not display page numbers at the bottom when printing both parents’ copies of the form. However, if you finalize the form, you can still print separate forms for each parent with page numbers included.

(Requested by: Rachel Kamm, Mankato Area Public Schools #54393)

On Saturday, April 29th, 2023, an update will be posted to all Minnesota SpEd Forms sites. This update includes the following fixes:

MA

1. Fixed Not billable activity logs to display all notes and allow finalization when there is no time listed.

(Requested by: Christine O’Brien, Inver Grove Heights Schools #53590)

2. Made a change to display and print evaluation log notes after an evaluation log has been billed and then reactivated.

(Requested by: Heather Murphy, North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale ISD #53573)

3. A change was made to prevent information from clearing on the PCA evaluation form.

(Requested by: Kari Saarloos, Anoka-Hennepin School District #53608)

4. Made a change to allow the supervisor field to be cleared from an activity log.

(Requested by: Emma Christenson, Fergus Falls Area Special Education Cooperative #53564)

5. Made a change to prevent the claim from disappearing when selecting or changing the MA setting.

(Requested by: Kari Saarloos, Anoka-Hennepin School District #53568)

Other forms and logs

1. Made a change to ensure all Special Ed teachers are able to access the Service reconciliation tool as expected.

(Requested by: Jennie Sorenson, Mounds View Public Schools #53677)

2. Made a change to the IEP Transition Services pg. 2 to ensure the print page maintains line breaks as anticipated.

(Requested by: Katie Mikla, Hastings Public Schools #53680)

System

1. Restored comments previously added to uploaded history documents.

(Requested by: Lauren Johnsen, Minnetonka Public Schools #53727)

On Saturday, April 29th, 2023, an update will be posted to all Minnesota SpEd Forms sites. The update will include the changes listed below:

ER

1. KBIT-2R, KABC II NU, and Vineland-3 have all been added to the SpEd Forms test library.

(Requested by: Dustin Hinckley, Red Lake Public Schools #53673)

MA

1. Made a change to specify a bad date when the save is unsuccessful on MA logs.

(Requested by: Tara Goebel, South Washington County Schools #52825)

2. The X12 batch file will ignore blank ICD10 codes and only send the first twelve codes.

(Requested by: Dellynne Monson, SWWC Service Cooperatives #52900)

3. A filter option, “Hide over 21 services”, has been added to the Create/edit claim transmission.

(Requested by: Tara Goebel, South Washington County Schools #52650)

4. A physical QP signature line and the ability for staff to electronically sign have been added to the PCA plan.

(Requested by: Sarah Olson, Detroit Lakes Public School District #53218)

5. Made a change to ignore the N362 remark code in the 835 X12 batch file.

(Requested by: Carla Cooper, Lakeville Area Schools #42492)

504

1. Updated the parent sections on the 504 Plan and the Notice of Conference page. A section for the district’s Section 504 coordinator was also added to the Manifestation determination page.

(Requested by: Amber Schultz, Anoka-Hennepin School District #53203/#53205/53212)

Other forms and logs

1. Agency contact information has been updated at the bottom of Part B PWNs. 

(Requested by: SpEd Forms #DE-3711)

2. The clear button on the Evaluation/Reevaluation Plan PWN form now has an updated function that lets it clear both the Eval/Assessment textboxes and texts on the form and print page.

(Requested by: Katie Mikla, Hastings Public Schools, #53172)

3. The Student Acknowledgement form’s language and title were updated to match the MDE version of this form.

(Requested by: SpEd Forms Advisory Committee, #53514)

Reports
1. The Reconciliation and Total Amount paid reports have been updated to calculate the reduced federal share percentage effective for claims paid after April 1st, 2023.

(Requested by: Amy Bean, Independent School District 318 #53685)

2. Added a School column to the “Signatures” MA Forms Searchable report.

(Requested by: Wanda Lane, Brainerd School District #53469)

3. “IEPs finalized as draft” has been added to available quick reporting.

(Requested by: Bill Underwood, Anoka-Hennepin School District #52963)

4. The search functionality of the Educator Services Report has been updated with the inclusion of a new search parameter named “Active students.”

(Requested by: Marla Pierskalla, St. Cloud Area School District #53012)

5. The MDE Consent to share data has been added to the admin MA forms in PDF format.

(Requested by: Kerri Whitney, Eastern Carver County Schools #53301)

6. The finalization date/time is now available as a sorting option on the Student history report.  It will also appear in a column on the result page of the report.

(Requested by: Bill Underwood, Anoka-Hennepin School District #53394)

7. The admin Login tracking report has been updated to include sorting options.

(Requested by: SpEd Forms #DE-3775)

2.0

1. The IEP Transition Services page 1, IEP Present Levels, IEP Student Information, and Transition Services page 2 have all been converted to v2.

(Requested by: SpEd Forms #DE-3734, #DE-3733, #DE-3696, #DE-3729)

2. Made a change in v2 to allow parents to electronically sign MA Consent to share data and Parental consent forms.

(Requested by: Amy Wylde, Southern Minnesota Education Consortium #53351)

3. Updates have been made to the IEP v2 menu to display the text ‘draft,’ ‘amended,’ or ‘amended draft’ when an IEP has been finalized and falls under one of these categories.

(Requested by: Christine O’Brien, Inver Grove Heights Schools #53363)

4. The v2 IEP print menu now includes a checkbox option that allows users to select or deselect pages 1-10.

(Requested by: Lindsey Paffrath-Bice, Willmar Public Schools #53442)

5. Visual improvements were made to the Evaluation/Reevaluation Plan Prior Written Notice.

(Requested by: SpEd Forms #DE-2748)

System

1. The term “case manager” was renamed to “plan manager” within the student sharing page.

(Requested by: SpEd Forms #DE-3718)

2. A new button called “Select from SpEd Forms tests” has been added to the Eval/assessment tools page within the Educator Setup and Admin Organization Menu. This new feature enables districts to easily copy all of SpEd Forms’ ER tests into the Eval/assessment tools section.

(Requested by: SpEd Forms #48535)

3. A building column has been added to the Admin Educators search screen results.

(Requested by: Karen Stay, St. Cloud Area School District #48980)

4. If parent access has been turned on and an admin user has access to Admin educators, they will now also see Admin parents, where they can search for and update parent accounts previously created through the Parent access report.

(Requested by: SpEd Forms #DE-3687)

5. We have streamlined the printing & PDF creation processes within SpEd Forms, making the process faster. We are thrilled that these changes increase the system’s efficiency behind the scenes for you at this particularly dynamic time of year.

(Requested by: SpEd Forms #DE-3699)

6. A “Separate households” checkbox was added to the edit parents page within Student setup. When selected, forms addressed to “Dear [parent]” will generate one copy for each parent when printed or finalized. A short YouTube video was created that shows how this works:

(Requested by: Bryan Schmidt, Rochester Public Schools #52858)

Announcements

We know how busy you all are, especially as the school year comes to a close.  Out of respect for that, we will push our May update a week early and not have any updates in June.  We wish you all the best as you finalize this school year.