USBE data and statistics staff told the finance committee on Oct. 3 that changes to the Utrack daily-collection specifications are final for the current editing cycle and that districts must meet statutory reporting deadlines tied to the October headcount.

Melissa Preziosi, USBE data-governance specialist, summarized the recent edits to the Utrack spec: added or revised incident-association fields to support alternate-assessment rostering; newly required grade designations for early-literacy and early-numeracy assessments (now k–3 rather than grades 1–3); a new field to collect teacher work email addresses to enable vendor portal rostering; and a new field on special-education (SCRAM) records to capture teacher Cactus IDs so alternate-assessment rosters can be constructed more accurately.

Preziosi said her team worked with subject-matter staff across USBE during the July editing window and made validation-rule changes to reduce common data errors. She explained the difference between warnings (nonblocking validations shown to LEAs) and fatal errors (which block the affected element from ingest) and encouraged LEAs to review the updated spec and plan for the new required fields.

Deadlines and process
USBE staff reminded districts there is no extension beyond the statutory reporting window under recent legislative requirements. Staff described the sequence: counties and tax/valuation data flow in late May/June; districts must adopt budgets by June 30; for the October headcount, districts should complete the Utrack submission process by Oct. 6 so USBE staff can finalize and transfer records to the longitudinal data system and to the governor and legislature by Oct. 15.

Staff said teams have been working with LEAs to resolve last-minute validation issues and emphasized that the October 1/Oct. 6/Oct. 15 sequence is now firm. USBE said it will post the updated specification and the validation list publicly and provide training and direct support to LEAs.