Humboldt City officials warn new state data system gaps could affect next year’s school funding
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Summary
District staff told the Humboldt City School Board that Tennessee’s new student-data system, TEDS, is not fully reporting enrollment and could affect funding allocations for next school year unless errors are corrected by June 15; the board also discussed attendance, benchmark testing, tutoring and recent hires.
Humboldt City School Board officials reported problems with a statewide student-data system rollout that could affect next year’s funding. District staff told the board the Tennessee Educational Data System (TEDS), launched July 1 to replace the old EIS system, is only reporting part of student records and that the district has until June 15 to resolve the issues that will determine funding for the next school year.
District staff member Wayne, who briefed the board on the TEDS rollout, said the new system “is probably running at 50% that they started on July 1.” Wayne said the district’s average daily membership as of that morning was 484 students and that, on the state reporting side, “that is less than half.”
Why it matters: state funding calculations use the student counts reported through TEDS, and the board was told errors in the reporting interface could change the funding the district draws next year. Wayne said the funding the district is generating from current reporting will be applied to next school year and repeated the timeline: “We have until the June 15 to get everything correct for us.”
Board members and staff described the technical problems as reporting gaps rather than data errors. Wayne said the district’s PowerSchool data feed is sending information with no state-side error messages for most fields, and that the only mismatches the district has found so far are two discipline records. “There’s no errors on the state side saying that the data we’re sending is wrong,” Wayne said, according to the meeting record.
District staff noted a loss of some functionality that had existed under the old EIS system: the ability to see which district enrolled a student and when. That capability helps the district identify students who have transferred in or been enrolled by another district so schools can update rosters and stop counting duplicates. Wayne said the TEDS reporting features that show district enrollments are not yet developed in the initial reports.
Board members then discussed related operational issues, including attendance tracking, early benchmark testing and interventions. The superintendent reported the district is monitoring attendance closely; one staff speaker summarized that attendance rates had been as high as about 97% and at times dropped to about 93%.
School staff described academic monitoring and early interventions. Teachers have used the AIMSweb benchmark to identify students who need support in reading and math; staff said students who did not meet initial benchmarks were already placed in intervention and are being progress-monitored weekly on Thursdays. Staff also said tutoring will begin soon to provide extra instructional time for identified students.
The board received a personnel update: a document in the meeting packet listed recent hires and the superintendent said the district was fully staffed as of the meeting. Board members also confirmed that one new hire, Katrina Smith, had completed paperwork and rejoined the staff.
A brief procedural note closed the segment: a board member moved to adjourn at the end of the report. The motion and its final outcome were recorded on the meeting transcript but the transcript does not record the second or the formal vote outcome in the excerpt provided.
The superintendent closed the report by saying, “madam chair that concludes my report.”