COMMONLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT MIS Q.

When should the college DSP&S office report a student's primary or secondary disability to MIS? A. A student's disability should be entered into your local MIS system as soon as it is verified according to Title 5 Section 56006. Q. Do we report all students that have been verified as having a disability, whether or not the college provided any DSP&S services or special class instruction to them? A. Yes. These data are useful to other programs and the Chancellor's Office for reporting purposes. For example, EOPS needs to know about a student's disability in order to allow the student to enroll in less then a full-time course load and still qualify for EOPS. Q. Under the MIS system, will a college be able to identify more than one secondary disability? If not, which secondary disability should the colleges report? A. The colleges will be able to identify only one secondary disability per student. A secondary disability is defined as a disability that is distinct and not caused by the primary disability. For example, a student may have a primary disability of ABI with mobility and speech disabilities resulting from the head injury. In this case, the college can not claim the student's mobility and speech disabilities as secondary disabilities for funding purposes. Q. If a student is tested for Learning Disabilities and served in the fall term but the disability verification is not completed until the spring term, how should the student be reported in MIS? What if the student doesn't enroll in the spring term? A. The student should not be reported in the MIS DSPS until the disability has been verified. If the student enrolls in the fall, but the disability is not verified until the spring term, then the student should be reported in the spring term with all of the service contacts for both fall and spring reported in the spring term-end MIS submission. If the student only enrolls in fall and does not enroll in the spring term, the student may still be reported in the spring MIS DSPS file with the fall service contacts as long as a Student Basic (demographic) record is also reported for that student in the spring. Q. What is the definition of a DSP&S "service contact"? A. A DSP&S service contact is any DSP&S service that is provided to a student related to the student's educational limitation as caused by their primary and secondary disability. A DSP&S service contact can include tutoring, note-taking, registration assistance, counseling, interpreting services, etc. Each time these DSP&S services are provided, it counts as a DSP&S service contact. For example, if the DSP&S program

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provides a tutor for a student three times a week for 9 weeks, that would be a total of 27 service contacts. However, a student who comes in for a counseling session and talks about four different services they will receive during the semester has not received four services. They have received one service, counseling, which helped plan for additional services to be received in the future. Q. What is not considered a DSP&S service contact? A. Any service that is provided by another college program and is offered to all eligible students is not a DSP&S service contact. Q. Is a college required to report more than four DSP&S service contacts per student? A. By reporting four DSP&S service contacts to MIS for a student with a disability, you are claiming that student as a DSP&S student for funding purposes. There is no need to report more than four service contacts to MIS, unless your district wants to track the total number of contacts per student. NOTE: Before DSP&S service contacts can be counted, the student must have been entered into the MIS system as a student with a disability. Q. Do all of the four DSP&S service contacts have to occur in one term or are they totaled for the year? A. A student needs only four DSP&S service contacts per year. These contacts can happen any time during the year, from the Summer to the Spring term. MIS will add together all the service contacts the student has for that year. Q. If an EOPS student with a verified disability does not receive four DSP&S service contacts, will the student still meet EOPS eligibility requirements with respect to full-time enrollment? A. Yes. If an EOPS program enrolls a student with a verified disability, that student meets the EOPS requirements for full-time enrollment, despite his/her limited course load. Q. How can we be sure that a student is not rejected as a DSP&S student by MIS? A. The DSP&S office should review the DSP&S data with the local MIS Office before it is submitted to the Chancellor's office each term. How this review should be done needs to be discussed with local MIS staff. Q. How do we code data elements for a course when different sections may be for disabled students, non-disabled students or both?

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A. If a course is an approved special course, it is coded as a Special Class and all sections of that class need to be coded as special sections. If there is a course that is not considered a special class but has an approved special section, only the section is coded as a special section. Q. Can a college claim a student with a disability who has been served by DSPS, but withdrew from college before the first census? A. In the situation above, the student would be counted as a DSP&S student for funding purposes if he or she received four service contacts. The Student Basic Data Record is used to identify a student when a disability record is entered. This is the record that is generated when the student enrolls at the college and is accessible, even if the student drops before the first census date.

Revised July, 2003