BESIS

The Bilingual Education Student Information Survey (BESIS) is an annual survey of all district and charter school ELL students who are eligible for ESL and Bilingual education services. In addition to collecting information about ELL students, the BESIS informs the state as to whether a school is eligible for Title III funding. The BESIS pulls information from ATS in order to identify the ELL students within the school, so it is important that **__all__** students within the school have the correct home language code listed in ATS (For example, if an ELL student incorrectly has "English" listed as her home language they will not appear on the BESIS. Conversely, a non-ELL who has a language other than "English" listed as his home language will incorrectly appear on the BESIS.). You will use ATS to input all BESIS information.

=Completing the BESIS=

In December the BESIS window will open in ATS. The fist step you will take will be to answer an overview survey for the ESL/Bilingual programs throughout your school. To enter this first survey screen, use the BEPG function in ATS. You will then be prompted to fill in the information at the school level (which programs are offered and in which grades). After filling in this information, use the BEDC function in ATS to continue on to the regular BESIS survey.

Once inside the BESIS screens, the first screen will ask you to enter information for either general education (enter G), or special education (enter S). It doesn’t matter which you do first, but make sure you do **__both__**. Once inside either the general education or special education screen, you will be prompted to fill in information for each individual child. Make sure to save your work often, and print a hard copy of each final screen. For more detailed information on how to complete the BESIS survey, you can access the BESIS manuals for general and special education: [|BESISInstructionsGeneralEdSY0910_FINAL.pdf],  [|BESISInstructionsSpecialEdSY0910_FINAL.pdf]

A few weeks after you have submitted the BESIS survey through ATS, you will receive a notification that the “BESIS Principal’s Certification” is available on ATS. To access this screen, use the RBPS function in ATS. Once it is printed, review the Principal’s Certification to assure that all information you inputted into ATS is correct. Then have the principal sing in ** BLUE ** ink, and make several copies. One of the copies and the original need to be submitted to your district’s ISC. Keep the other copy/copies on file at the school.