SIMS Duplicate Student Resolution

If two or more districts report the same student as being enrolled or out-placed on the same reporting date, the student will be included on the Duplicate Student Report that is posted back to the district. That report will contain the following student information:

• District (Organization code)
• SASID
• First Name
• Middle Name
• Last Name
• School code
• Grade Level
• Conflicting District(s)
• Comments

1. DESE staff will inform the district SIMS Contact via email of the report being posted to the Duplicate Students application.

2. District staff must check the Duplicate Students application to see if there are any enrollment conflicts listed for their district. If the current reporting period does not appear in the dropdown for a particular district, that means the district has no enrollment conflicts to review. The SIMS contact must investigate each student listed in the application to determine the details of their enrollment on report date. After determining the correct enrollment status for each student in the report, the SIMS contact will inform DESE staff of each student's status by editing the DOE012 value if necessary, and entering information in the comment section.

   The comments should include any information that is pertinent to the student's status in the district such as date of entry and/or date transferred out, cost-share district involved, district agreement regarding which district should be reporting, etc. For outplaced students, it is important to note where the student resided on report date.

3. Once any DOE012 edits have been made and comments have been entered and saved, the SIMS contact should also be sure to make any necessary changes in the SIS for these students. If a particular student needs other fields corrected aside from just DOE012 (enrollment status), the SIMS contact should request that their SIMS data be decertified so it can be edited. This will allow the SIMS contact to edit other fields such as DOE017 and DOE018, to change a student to a summer exit, for example.

Districts Unable to Resolve Duplicates

If after investigating the student status, both districts continue to claim the student as enrolled, the SIMS contacts in the two districts should speak with each other to resolve the conflict prior to DESE intervention. In situations where the districts cannot resolve the duplicate students themselves, DESE Data Collection staff will assist in the resolution.

***If a district has not responded to DESE staff by the deadline in which to edit data, all students for that particular district may be changed to transferred to remove the enrollment conflict.

Last Updated: August 26, 2004