WISEstaff Virtual Teachers Reporting Guide for Districts

WISEstaff Data Collection and Reporting

This page covers use cases to aid with the nuanced reporting of virtual teachers employed by school districts.

If you do not see a scenario listed, have a scenario that you would like to share to be posted on this webpage, please submit a WISE Help Ticket, selecting WISEstaff from the application dropdown.

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General Reporting Scenarios

1. FTE: FTE should be estimated - based on guidance in FTE Guidance unless specified differently in scenarios below.

• If a virtual teacher’s course section contains students from multiple districts there should be multiple assignments with working agencies for each agency's students with FTE divided between them based on each agency's portion of the total students. For example: If a virtual teacher has 30 students in a course, and 15 of them are from another agency, since 15 is half of 30, the teacher’s FTE for this course would be 0.5 FTE.
• Homeschool Students: Data for public school staff working with homeschool students should not be reported in WISEstaff.
• Staff Who Transcribe Final Grades: Districts who employ a staff member for the sole purpose of transcribing final grades for virtual course sections given by the virtual teacher do not require teaching licenses because they are not the teacher for this course. Those staff do not require teaching licenses for the subjects being taught when there is an appropriately licensed online virtual teacher for the course section being provided by the vendor or CESA. The virtual teacher for the course section should be listed as the teacher for the course section and be the one determining the grades. The virtual teacher also needs to be reported in WISEstaff. Some vendors employ floating staff to assist the main virtual teachers. Those floating assistant staff don’t need to be reported.
• Virtual Content: Purchasing virtual content only and using your own teachers to teach virtually has the same WISEstaff reporting and licensing requirements as non-virtual course sections.
• Students from Multiple Agencies for One Teacher: If the course section is a mix of their own working agency students and other agency’s students, assignments for each agency's students should be reported as separate assignments. For the hiring agency’s students, the staff should be reported normally with their own hiring and working agency. For other agencies students, the working agency should be the student’s agency. FTE should be prorated between the separated assignments.
• Virtual Teacher, In-State or Out-of-State: The hiring agency who is paying the virtual teacher directly by way of W2 or 1099 contract, or who is paying a for-profit vendor provider for a teacher, is responsible for reporting teachers in WISEstaff and ensuring these staff are appropriately licensed to teach their virtual course sections.
  • Appropriate licensing requirements will vary depending on whether the teacher in located in Wisconsin, or outside of Wisconsin.
  • Virtual teachers who live Out-of-state should be reported under the assignment 53-9001 (Out-of-State Online Teacher) and need to have a license in their respective state.
  • Those hiring agencies should require vendors they contract with to provide the information needed to do both WISEid (name, birthdate, race/ethnicity, gender, and licensing Entity ID if residing in WI) and WISEstaff reporting.
  • This information is a legal requirement so that DPI can monitor the licensing status of those staff.

CESA Scenarios

• CESAs are nonprofit organizations and are not considered for-profit vendors in this document. See various scenarios below this section involving CESAs.

Use Case for Wisconsin Virtual School

1. Providing Both Virtual Content and Virtual Teacher (CESA 9): For WISEstaff reporting, CESA 9 should be listed as both the Hiring and Working Agency with District Wide for Working School. CESA 9 is responsible for all WISEstaff reporting for WVS so students’ districts should not do any WISEstaff reporting for WVS course sections.
   • FTE should be 0.1 or lower if the total FTE for the staff member exceeds the district warning limit of 1.99 or statewide warning limit of 1.5.

Consortium Use Casees

1. Consortium Charter Schools: A charter school within a school district whose authorizing school district contracts with other school districts to provide instruction within the charter school to students outside of their own district. Includes both brick-and-mortar district charter schools and virtual charter schools. Typically, the authorizing district is both the hiring and working agency and the working school is the charter school. See Currently Operating Charter Schools webpage for the current list of consortium charter schools and the Consortium Charter School Cheat Sheet for more information.
2. Jedi CESA 2: Jedi Virtual Charter School is a virtual consortium charter school, but whose staff is hired by CESA 2. As the hiring agency, CESA 2 is responsible to report staff with the work agency being whichever district is the current authorizing district.
3. Wisconsin eSchool Network (WEN): Wisconsin eSchool Network provides online courses offered to students from any district. Participation in the program changes. These course sections are taught by teachers hired by multiple school districts. See below for instructions on how WISEstaff reporting works based on if the hiring agency is Racine and Kenosha or if its other districts. The course sections may be entirely made up of students from one district or maybe be split between students from multiple districts. Contact WEN for help with reporting if needed.
   1. WEN Teachers hired by Racine and Kenosha School Districts: If the courses sections are taught by teachers hired by the Racine and Kenosha School Districts this is how they are reported in WISEstaff. Racine or Kenosha is the hiring agency who reports, and the working district/school is set by them to the district the student typically attends. If calculating FTE is too complex Racine or Kenosha can elect to use the 0.1 FTE method WVS uses as described above in the WVS section.
   2. WEN Teachers Hired by Other Agencies Besides Racine and Kenosha: If the course sections are taught by teachers hired by other agencies besides Racine and Kenosha this is how they are reported in WISEstaff:
   3. More than 10 Students per WEN Course Section: If there are more than 10 students per course section from one working agency the hiring agency would report them in WISEstaff with the working agency/school of the students with the approximate FTE value for that section.
   4. Less than 10 Students per WEN Course Section: If less than 10 students are in a course section for a working agency no reporting is needed since there is a net-zero reciprocal student learning balance between districts and assignments reporting are already done through the hiring agency (always a district providing teacher not WEN). For example: if district A would have .01 FTE of teachers provided for District B and district B would have .01 FTE of teachers for district A so the net change would be zero and very small between the two districts and reporting in WISEstaff beyond what the hiring agency already does for their own students is not necessary.