The FES Enrollment/Scheduling Process takes the FES EO & FES UA Student Lists and creates enrollment and schedule records for these FES students. This process simplifies keeping track of FES students.
What is the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES)?
The Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) Program was established during the 2019 Legislative Session. The program provides children whose families have limited financial resources with state funds to attend a private school. (section 1002.394, Florida Statutes)
FES provides eligible students a scholarship to attend a private school selected by the parent. A student is eligible for the FES if the student meets the following criteria:
- The student’s household income does not exceed 300% of the federal poverty level ($77,250.00 for a family of four) or the students on the direct certification list (list of children who qualify for the food assistance program, the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Program, or the Food Distribution on Indian Reservations program); or
- The student is currently placed, or during the previous state fiscal year was placed, in foster care or in out-of-home care as defined in section 39.01, Florida Statutes.
AND
- The student is eligible to enroll in kindergarten or has spent the prior school year in attendance at a Florida public school. Prior attendance means the student was enrolled in and in attendance at a Florida public school during both the October (Survey 2) and February (Survey 3) student counts; and
- Prior to scholarship funds being awarded, the student must be accepted and enrolled in a participating private school.
See https://info.fldoe.org/docushare/dsweb/Get/Document-8556/dps-2019-70a.pdf for more information about the requirements.
Prior year attendance is waived for students in military families relocating to Florida, students in Foster Care, and siblings of an eligible student. Students participating in the FES program cannot take virtual courses that are reported for state funding.
See https://famisonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/FAMIS-School-Choice-June-2019.pdf for more information.
Can FES students be dual enrolled? Here is the response from FLDOE’s Office of Independent Education & Parent Choice:
“If a student is attending public school during the survey week where FTE would be reported for the student, this could potentially forfeit the students scholarship. A student on FES cannot be also enrolled in public school. However, there is nothing that prohibits an FES UA student from dual enrolling at a post secondary school for a course.”
McKay Transition to FES
House Bill 7045 expanded the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program to include two branches of eligibility, the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Educational Options (FES EO) and the Family Empowerment Scholarship for Students with Unique Abilities (FES UA).
The law that originally created the McKay Scholarship Program is repealed as of June 30, 2022. Effective July 1, 2022, students participating in the McKay Scholarship Program will join the Family Empowerment Scholarship Program under the Unique Abilities category (FES UA).
“Public McKay” Students using the McKay Scholarship public school option will be able to continue doing so under the FES UA public school option. Families should continue to work with their districts in selecting their public school choice.
See https://www.fldoe.org/schools/school-choice/k-12-scholarship-programs/mckay/fes-faqs.stml for more information.
How Districts Can Identify FES Students
Parents will apply for the FES program outside of the school district, and FLDOE will provide districts with FES payment files on a quarterly basis with these eligible students included. FLDOE will also provide districts with FES UA and FES EO student list files that the district can download from their FLDOE SSO portal for use in identifying these FES students. On the FES Student List file there are columns (PP1-PP4) that indicate which payment file(s) a given student is included in. These student list files are constantly being updated by FLDOE so it is important that you are downloading from FLDOE portal and uploading your FES student list files periodically into Focus in order to enroll/schedule any new students who have become FES students.
The FES Enrollment/Scheduling Process takes the FES EO & FES UA Student Lists and creates enrollment and schedule records for these FES students. This process simplifies keeping track of FES students. Please see the steps below on how to get this setup for your district for a more efficient and effective way of getting these students enrolled & scheduled.
1. Download student list files from FLDOE portal.
In your FLDOE SSO portal, you see an FES EO Student List and an FES UA Student list.
2. In the Florida Reports menu, click FES Enrollment/Scheduling Process.
3. Click the Upload FES Student List tab.
Ensure the correct school is selected from the School pull-down in the header.
4. Select the Category in order to upload FES student list file(s) for Educational Options (EO) and/or Unique Abilities (UA).
5. Click Choose File to upload the corresponding file from your computer.
6. Click Upload.
Select the Category and select the file once for FESEOStudentList and once for FESUAStudentList. Once uploaded, a confirmation displays a message indicating which file (UA or EO) was uploaded and the syear the file was uploaded.
The data is stored in the FLORIDA_FES_STUDENT_LIST table. As mentioned earlier, FLDOE is constantly updating the FES student list files so it’s important to periodically upload new student list files provided by FLDOE into Focus to keep enrollment/scheduling up to date. The FES student list table (FLORIDA_FES_STUDENT_LIST) clears automatically when a new student list is imported.
7. Click the Run Process tab.
In order for the process to run, the following criteria must be met:
1. You have an FES student list file uploaded into Focus (as described in the previous steps).
2. You have a teacher assigned to school "3900" with either "FES" or "3900" included in either the teacher's first or last name.
If neither of these terms are met, you will see the following error message displayed.
If one is true and the other is false, you will get an error message indicating what is still missing in the setup (either incorrect teacher setup or a missing student list file).
8. Select an Effective Date using the Month, Date, and Year pull-downs. The Effective Date determines the enrollment and schedule start dates.
Many districts have reported that they are using the first day of school for the 1st half of the year/semester and the 1st day of the 2nd half of the year/semester for once that time of the year comes around, but this date is district discretion and can be adjusted if desired.
Reason districts have reported doing it this way is because the following must be true in order for an FES student to pull for survey extracts since Focus does not look at attendance for FES "3900" students:
The student will need an enrollment start_date <= the effective_date/date certain for survey.
AND
The schedule for the student needs to be active during the 5-day survey week.
The Effective Date defaults to today’s date; if today’s date is outside of the calendar range for FES, Focus will use the last day on the calendar.
9. Select the school Calendar for school 3900; the pull-down defaults to the calendar flagged as default.
10. Select the Period from the pull-down for which sections should be built.
11. Select the applicable FES Teacher from the pull-down, if multiple options are available.
12. Select the Primary Language Spoken In Home from the pull-down. The option selected sets the students' Primary Language Spoken in Home field (CUSTOM_546) for all new students being imported. If N/A is selected, nothing will be imported.
The process will not overwrite values for existing students.
13. Select the Payment File Validation from the pull-down.
- This is not validating against the actual payment file, but the PP1-PP4 columns on the student list files.
- On the FES student list file, there are four columns (PP1-PP4) to indicate which payment file a student is currently listed. If a student doesn’t have a ‘YES’ value in any of the four columns, they will be excluded from import.
- If you would like to require students to be listed as being in a specific payment file, you can set that here. If more than one file is selected, the process will look for a ‘YES’ in one of the files selected, not all.
- If this field is left blank, the process will only validate that the student has a ‘YES’ value in any of the four files.
- Although the payment file isn’t required to be uploaded for the FES Enrollment/Scheduling process to correctly enroll & schedule a student, the payment file(s) need to be uploaded as these files are used in Generate FES Extracts and the FES Payment Confirmation Reports.
- There is an FES Import Exceptions report titled Students Enrolled at FES, Not Present in Payment File that can be referenced to review these discrepancies.
14. Select the Use Focus Grade Levele If FES Grade Level is Different check box to force the Focus grade level to be used instead of the FES grade level. When left cleared (unchecked), by default, if a student is actively enrolled and has a grade level that differs from the FES file, that grade level will be overwritten with the FES grade level.
There is an FES Import Exceptions report titled FES Students Focus Assigned Grade Not Matching FES File that can be referenced to review these grade level discrepancies.
15. Select the Upload Local ID Match File check box when running the process on a survey site so that the students' local IDs match what is in the production site.
a. Click Choose File to upload a local ID match file from your computer.
1. To utilize this screen in Production, in the Florida Reports menu, click FES Enrollment/Scheduling Process.
2. Click the Export Local ID Match tab.
This file is intended to be exported from your production site after you have run the process there to sync your local IDs from production to your survey site for FES students that were added to the student list file after your survey site was created.
2. After running the FES process on production, select an Effective Date. The date is used to filter out students who dropped from 3900, so if a student was dropped prior to the effective date selected, these students will be excluded from the match file.
3. Click Export.
4. After exporting the local ID match file, you would then need to upload the same FES Student List file to your survey site, and run the process there with the same options, but you would upload the local ID match file by selecting the Upload Local ID Match File check box.
5. Click Choose File to locate the local ID match file you just exported. Once the process completes, your local IDs match your production site.
16. Click Run Process.
17. Click Show Logs to see details about what the process has imported and how long it took. You may click the button at any time while the process is running to see the current status of the import job.
Once you click Run Process, you may either wait for it to complete with confirmation as pictured above, or you may choose to navigate away from this screen, and the process will continue to run in the background. At this time, the process will not indicate when it’s complete if you navigate away from the screen; however, you can click Show Logs at any time to see the most recent information about the current and past import runs.
If you select an Effective Date outside of the calendar selected, an error message displays.
Once the process is ran successfully, the listed number of Student Imported, Sections Created, and Scheduled Created displays.
Running the FES Enrollment/Scheduling process will compare each FES student on the FES Student List file(s) that was uploaded into Focus against any current or previous enrollment record and attempt to enroll or schedule them appropriately.
No Student Match on FLEID: If there is no match on student FLEID, the FES Enrollment/Scheduling process will create an enrollment record, student demographic record, and student schedule record based on the data supplied in the FES Student List file.
Student Match on FLEID but Currently Inactive: If there is a match on FLEID, but the student is currently inactive, the Enrollment/Scheduling process will create an enrollment record and student schedule record based on the data supplied in the FES Student List file and update the student demographic record based on the data supplied in the FES Student List file.
Student Match in Focus Based on First & Last Name, Birthdate, & Gender but with a Different FLEID than FES Student List File: If there is a match on student first name, last name, birthdate, and gender but a different FLEID in the FES Student List file than what Focus has for the student’s FLEID, the FES Enrollment/Scheduling Process will not import the student(s).
- These students can be viewed on the following FES Import Exceptions report: FES Students Matching on Demo, But With Different FLEID Than FES File where you can determine whether or not you would like to import the student, or resolve any possible matching student records.
Students That will be Enrolled/Scheduled:
- Students that have never been enrolled in the district.
- Students that were previously enrolled in a past year but are not currently active as of the Effective Date.
- Students that are currently active at 3900 and not yet scheduled but exist in one of the FES Student List files.
If any of the following fields for a student are NULL/missing the student will be skipped:
- FLEID
- First name
- Last Name
- EO student will need a value for current_private school (UA student will automatically be assigned to ‘4444’)
Student is already scheduled under 3900 for the current syear.
Student doesn’t exist in FES Student List Table (FLORIDA_FES_STUDENT_LIST)
- Be sure to import the latest Student List file(s) under Florida Reports > FES Enrollment/Scheduling Process > Upload FES Student List
Student is currently active at another school in the district other than ‘3900’
- Use the FES Import Exceptions report: Active Students Enrolled At Non FES (3900) School to determine which students in the file are already enrolled at a non-FES school.
The Upload FES Payment File process allows users to upload the Family Empowerment Scholarship (FES) program file downloaded from the state school choice website: https://www.floridaschoolchoice.org/login/login_district.asp after the prepayment verification process. Once uploaded, the payment file data is inserted into Focus's background tables for use in various Florida Reports processes.
1. Click the Upload FES Payment File tab.
2. Select the Payment File from the pull-down.
3. Select the applicable Category from the pull-down, such as Educational Options (EO).
4. Select the file to upload by clicking Choose File. Select the file downloaded from the state school choice website: https://www.floridaschoolchoice.org/login/login_district.asp.
5. Once the file is uploaded, click Upload.
