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Date: March 4, 2025  
To: WISEstaff Primary, Secondary, and Generic Contacts & District Administrators (including public school districts, independent charter school districts, CESAs, CCDEBs, and DPI, DOC, and DHS state schools)  
From: Department of Public Instruction--Customer Services Team (CST) and Licensing, Education Advancement and Development (LEAD)  
Subject: WISEstaff Final Certification is Open for 2024-2025  

The final certification window opened today and will run for two weeks, closing on the certification deadline of March 18, 2025.  
Now is the time to complete your WISEstaff submission, verifying it’s free of errors and warnings, as the final snapshot is approaching on March 18, 2025. Ensure you load assignments and contracts for all staff whom you are required to report. No corrections to assignment and contract data can be made after the final certification deadline on March 18, 2025.   
It is your agency’s responsibility to ensure that all professional staff members have a valid license for their assignment(s) as required by law. School boards specifically are required under Wis. Stat. §121.02 to ensure appropriately licensed professional staff and under Wis. Stat. §118.21 to ensure staff are appropriately licensed for their teaching contract. The WISEstaff collection and resulting license audit assists your agency in meeting your obligations under law.  

 Steps for Final Certification  
Completing the final certification, which is your indication that you have entered all staff data and reviewed it for quality to the best of your ability, is an easy process once all required steps are met:  
  • Ensure all staff assignments, contracts, and Entity IDs are entered.  
  • Review the Staff Collection Checklist / Step 3 and correct all errors. Also correct or acknowledge all warnings.  
  • Review the full Data Quality Dashboard for any potential issues or unexpected trends, especially if any red or orange indicators are triggered.  
  • Certification process:  
  • Select the Certify Data link from the Manage Staff Data menu or click Complete Final Agency Certification (step 3g) on the Staff Collection Checklist.  
  • Review the dashboard metrics comparing the current year’s data to last year; make data corrections as needed.  
  • Once all data corrections are complete, check the box on the Certify Data page to indicate that you certify that your agency’s data is final; click Save.  
 
What’s in it for me?  Potential ramifications of providing inaccurate or incomplete data on the final audit are: 
  • Reduction of Special Education Categorical Aid for improperly reported or licensed staff 
  • Inability for staff to renew lifetime licenses if assignments aren’t reported correctly 
  • The public staff reports will show that staff aren't properly licensed.  
  • Federal reporting will include incomplete or inaccurate information. 
  • The public and other consumers of licensing and staff reports will be misinformed about their school districts 
  • Stakeholders that use public staff reports for decision-making and research will be working with inaccurate data. 

You can make corrections to assignments and staff can apply for additional licensing at any time before the final certification deadline on March 18, 2025.  

WISEstaff User Group Calls 
DPI staff are available every Tuesday to answer your WISEstaff questions! The next User Group call is Tuesday, March 4th from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. 

WISEstaff User Group calls are scheduled every Tuesday from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m. You can see dates for upcoming calls on the WISEdata Events page. During the call, you may submit questions in the chat. You can also view the WISEstaff User Group call weekly agenda to enter your questions in advance of the next weekly call and to review what’s been covered in past calls. To access the User Group agenda, you must first join the WISE Community team by submitting a Help Desk Ticket.  

The  WISE Community contains vital communications, updates, and resources for WISEstaff, WISEdata, WISEdash, and other areas, and provides a peer-to-peer connection platform to ask (or answer) questions and collaborate with fellow schools/districts. Once you are a member, you will be able to view and post; however, file access is only granted to new members on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons at 3 p.m. Keep this timing in mind if you wish to access the agenda during the User Group call.  

Common topics in the Tuesday User Group meetings are: 
  • DPI staff from the WISEstaff development team and the Licensing team cover pertinent updates and answer any questions you have. 
  • Answers for frequently asked or important licensing questions. 
  • Overview and demonstrations of new WISEstaff functionality. 
  • Demonstrations of existing WISEstaff features. 
  • There’s a portion of time at the end of every call for Q&A -- Ask your own WISEstaff questions. 
 
Important Dates (Find a full timeline on the WISEstaff Data Collection Reporting Information and Timeline page):  
  • March 4, 2025:  Final certification opens 
  • Tuesday March 4, 2025 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. User Group call (event link)  
  • Tuesday March 11, 2025 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. User Group call (event link)  
  • Tuesday March 18, 2025 11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. User Group call (event link)  
  • March 18, 2025: Deadline for final certification 
 
Resources:   
If you need additional guidance, please reach out to us. We are here to support you in submitting the most accurate data possible. Please contact the Customer Services team by submitting a Help Desk Ticket. If you have a licensing-related question, please contact Educator Licensing.                                     
 
Thank you for your continued attention to data quality! 
 

DPI Customer Services and Licensing, Educator Advancement and Development (LEAD) teams 
 

 
 
Keywords: WISEstaff; certification; 2024-25