WASBO Webinar: Addressing the Act 185 Survey

Webinar Recording from October 8, 2020

WASBO is pleased to offer this free webinar recording to help school districts complete the mandatory Act 185 Survey. Our premise is that the survey will produce more accurate and useful data for the legislature if all districts adopt a consistent methodology and work from a common set of assumptions for each question.

The Act 185 Survey is a series of twenty-two questions mostly relating to the impacts of school closures during the 2019-2020 school year. Of particular interest to WASBO are two survey questions addressing the impact of the pandemic on school district financials for 2019-20 and 2020-21. It is critically important that the legislature has accurate picture of how the pandemic has affected school district budgets. 

We encourage you to take advantage of this free webinar recording. Please note that all school districts are required to complete the Act 185 Survey by Nov. 1. 2020.

 

How to answer those 22 Act 185 survey questions

Recap of session from the WASBO Finance Conference on August 11, 2020

One certainty regarding the upcoming school year is that all districts will be required to complete the Act 185 Survey by November 1, 2020.

The survey is a series of 22 questions relating to the impacts of school closures during the 2019-2020 school year due to the ongoing public health emergency. Erin Fath, director of DPI’s Policy and Budget team, presented on the best practices districts should take when filling out the survey at the WASBO Finance Conference on August 11. Dan Bush, director of DPI’s School Financial Services team, also helped shed light on the survey during the presentation.

2019 Wisconsin Act 185 is the state’s legislative response to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting public health emergency. The act contains a requirement that all K12 school districts report specified information about the impacts of school closures from the time Gov. Tony Evers closed schools on March 12 until the end of the school year on June 30. The DPI will analyze the information collected from districts and create a public statewide report to the State Legislature by January 1, 2021.

Fath said the required information to be reported includes: the delivery of virtual instruction to students by public schools during the period of school closures, meals served to students during the closure, and fiscal and staffing impacts of the public health emergency and school closures on school district operations.

She said the survey can be accessed via a link embedded in a notification email sent to district administrators on August 10. The DPI will continue to send reminders to all district administrators around the state as the November deadline gets closer. The survey includes more questions than were specified in Act 185.

This is intended to provide context for school district responses to the required data elements, Fath said, and indicated that DPI’s approach was to gather additional information so as to “… provide a really comprehensive picture about the impact of school closures on schools.”

Bush noted that the framing of the questions in Act 185 does not necessarily present a complete picture. For example, he said one of the questions in the act asks about savings due to school closures, but not about increased costs.

“I think we recognize that you all know there are certainly some areas where districts saved money. There are others where districts spent more and are spending more,” Bush said. “So, we decided that having the question verbatim wouldn’t have gotten a full and accurate picture of what the financial impact of the pandemic is.”

In addition to the association partners, he said multiple district representatives also reviewed the survey before it was released.

“This isn’t something we take lightly and want to make overly burdensome for you, but we want to make sure that in responding to this legislative requirement that we are not presenting an incomplete picture,” Bush said. “That’s really important to us.”

Fath said the questions deal with finances, staffing, meals served, how districts provided instruction to students, and more. In order to make sure districts are prepared, she said the DPI is recommending the following steps: designating a primary contact who will be filling out the survey, open and review the survey questions ahead of time, distribute survey questions to the appropriate staff members to answer them, and have that designated primary contact complete the survey from the direct survey webpage.

They noted that because the survey was designed to gather comprehensive information around the specific data elements required in Act 185, responding to the survey is going to take some work on the part of the school district – for example, responding to the question about how costs differed from what the district would have otherwise expected (absent the COVID-19 public health emergency and resulting school closures).

Here’s what else you need to know about the survey:

  • All but one of the questions pertain to the March 12-June 30 window of school building closures. Question 18 is the only one that pertains to the upcoming 2020-21 school year.
  • Responses from the survey will save if you exit the survey until you press submit. After submission if you catch an error you’d like to correct, please reach out to DPI by emailing them at [email protected].
  • The survey can be previewed by viewing a PDF or downloading a Word document.
  • Email reminders and the survey link will be sent to district administrators only. Please email [email protected] with any questions or concerns.
  • Survey responses must be submitted into the survey webpage to report this information to DPI. Please do not send survey responses to DPI via email or mail.
  • Bush said there’s currently no indication that the Legislature will require a similar survey on the upcoming school year. Reporting requirements for federal ESSER funds, a draft of which was released by the U.S. Department of Education soon after the conference, may be sufficient for an understanding of 2020-21 impacts.

For more information, please visit https://dpi.wi.gov/policy-budget/2019-act-185-survey.