Querying for Student counts for past years

 

If you are tasked with finding historical information in SIRAS, you are in luck, there is plenty of it.

Each meeting that happens in SIRAS creates an archive which can be queries using the Historical/Advanced features of the Search.

 

The simplest way to get student counts for past years is to use the Predefined Queries for CALPADS Historical Estimates:

 

 

The predefined queries sets up criteria on archived records which can be modified in the Historical/Advanced query tab in the Search.
This also is an estimate from same AY 18-19that is more focused on unique records that have been sent to CALPADS:

 

 

Pivoting on enrollment lists

 

Querying directly on archived records may be problematic if you are just trying to get a very accurate head count.

Reason being there may be several events that happened during the year, or none at all while the student was enrolled.

SIRAS does not necessarily always have accurate district enrollment for each year as it is not the system of record.

So if we want any 'old' data from SIRAS to make sense today when reporting on it, we will need a list of who all was enrolled that same year.
We pivot on that larger list with the SIRAS data to identify which records in this 'too much' data from SIRAS we really need to look at.

Here is how you can get that 'too much' data from SIRAS:

 

You can study how SIRAS query works to find archives during the date ranges requested, or you can use the historical easy button below.

We suggest manually building the query for higher accuracy but review the historical estimates as well, see comparative screenshots.

Both methods have their pros/cons.

 

If you are doing several years in a row, then it is important that you use RESET SEARCH between each year you are reporting on.

 

For each year you find, export that data to Excel in separate files.

 

Here is how you would find students who may have attended during the academic year of 2018-2019

(This assumes your district has used SIRAS for at least 6 years.)

 

Prepare and save a SIRAS list of the data points you need for this report.

Save the list for using it in the export area.

You will do the past data query below, search to list

then export the data to report on from that year.

 

Click Search, then predefined queries

Open CALPADS Historical Estimates

 

Select 2018-2019 from Year for Census Queries (or whatever year you are reporting on)

 

Click the EOY Census to get all IEP transactions that occurred that academic year. see screenshot below

If you have found records you will be taken to a list.
Then go to /tools/data export/

Export this data to an excel spreadsheet.

 

Save the academic years into the name of the file so it is easy to identify later.

 

Then when you have several files for several years, those files can be compared to the SSID list of enrolled students to get final totals for each of the SIRAS files.

 

Contact support @sirassystems.com if you need further assistance with this.

 

Finding Records over age 26, Inactive for over a year:

 

To avoid having very old Inactive records from coming up in searches and queries, Siras has a "historical" designation to separate these out from the more recently Inactive records.

 

Records with age over 26, with both Inactive Date and Last Modified over 1 year in the past will be automatically moved to this historical designation.  If you need to find one of these records, they can be brought back to the Special Ed/504/SST designation by creating and accepting a Transfer Request.