Best practice of Private School Enrollment is to check in with your SELPA for local procedures and guidelines.
How to find private school students in SIRAS
We have a new student student in our district going to a private school, what do we do?
As of Fall 2025, CDE is giving updated guidance on private school scenarios.
The context is to get better data for Proportionate Share funding models.
Enrolling to get SSID vs Enrolling to show attendance at private school.
If a student who attends a private school is referred, the district can have private school enrollment that corresponds with the normal school year.
This type of enrollment model lends itself to overlapping enrollment for events such as pending as of MEET record and the Initial IEP MEET record itself.
Past 'one day' enrollments were fragile if enrollment date to event dates didn't match or overlap.
If a student is currently enrolled in Private School and is being referred for IEP:
Staff will be having an Initial IEP and offer the IEP to the family at the school the student would attend were they attending a public school.
Please check with your SELPA on what ISP your district can offer if the IEP is not accepted.
See HERE for PPT from CDE on guidance on private school procedures. (2022 updated 2023)
See HERE for PPT from CDE on guidance on private school and proportionate share procedures. (2025)
See HERE for YouTube video by Brandi J. for guidance on how to obtain SSIDs for referrals. (2023)
See HERE for PPT of the YouTube video by Brandi J. for guidance on how to obtain SSIDs for referrals. (2023)
Basically, we enroll in CALPADS as of the parental consent date, as this will allow your district to report the results of the initial IEP regardless of the outcome. If the student ends up never enrolling, we simply start and stop the enrollment as of the parental consent date.
TIPS:
Just because a student is 'enrolled' in private school in your district doesn't mean we need a 'Private School' enrollment in CALPADS.
What matters is if the student is eligible for SPED and lives in your district and is also enrolled in a private school within your district, then we may want private school enrollment.
But what if this student who is eligible for SPED attends a private school within your district boundaries but the student does not live in your district? Then the other district typically would enroll.
Why do we say 'may' want to this or that?
This is because each time we get a 'private school' question, these are the factors we need to contend with.
DOR: District of Residence (of the student)
DOL: District of Location (of the private school)
The nuances of how to deal with:
- Students who live in your district but attend/referred to in district private school DOR and DOL
- Students who live in your district but attend/referred to out of district private school DOR not DOL
- Students who don't live your district but attend/referred to a private school within your district DOL not DOR
Then on top of that is the scenario:
- Is the student currently not eligible but being referred?
- Is the student currently eligible but not participating?
- Is the student currently eligible and participating?
- Is there a settlement agreement with your district?
- Is the student currently enrolled at a public school?
- Is the student currently enrolled at a private school within your district?
- Is the student currently enrolled at a private school outside your district?
- Is the student not currently enrolled at all?
Again, best practice of Private School Enrollment is to check in with your SELPA for local procedures and guidelines.
Feel free to email [email protected] with questions and we can help work with your director and SELPA on resolution.
