Overview

It is important to review the agreement your district has with the virtual education providers to make sure the virtual program are reported correctly. This guide cannot substitute to for reading and understanding the agreement. If you have any questions or concerns with how to report the virtual instruction occurring in your district please work with your MIS staff in your district. Funding in virtual programs is based on Successful Course Completion. Final funding is only awarded for successful course completions whether the students are promoted or not.

Basic Course Setup

All virtual courses have basic required information just like regular courses. If this required information is not entered the course will not be sent to DOE for FTE surveys:

Period Number(s)
Days
Teacher
Calendar
Marking Period
Class Weekly Minutes

Districts can choose to setup a separate virtual school in Focus from their brick and mortar school, or if the virtual classes are only being taken by students enrolled in the brick and mortar school they can setup the virtual classes in the brick and mortar school using the Virtual School Number as the School of Instruction on the sections.

Staff

Staff must be entered into Focus and assigned the following information:

Florida Educators Certificate Number – different for each instructional staff.
Social Security Number - first two characters should be CS then followed by a unique number for each staff member. For example: "CS12345678". This number must be unique for each staff.
Staff Local ID - Make a number up. You might use FLVS00XXXX where XXXX is the four digit staff number focus assigns at the top left of the staff name, the number just needs to be 10 characters long.

First time offering new program

If a district plans to offer a virtual program of 7004, 7006 or 7023 for the first time, it should contact the departments Education Information and Accountability Services office to activate this school number prior to June 1^st before the school year when they plan to offer the courses: http://doeweb-prd.doe.state.fl.us/EDS/MasterSchoolID/index.cfm

Blended Learning

The district may determine the course is blended. Instruction through the blended learning model may be provided using online instructional videos, online class forums, and online homework assignments and projects, coupled with one-on-one direct instructional support to students. Blended Learning must have a face-to-face direct instruction component as well as an online instruction. Blended learning courses must have personnel who are certified pursuant to Section 1012.55, F.S. and provide direct instruction pursuant to Section 1003.498, F.S.

The amount of FTE reported for a blended learning course should be reflective of the student’s schedule. The total FTE reported for a full-year blended learning course should not exceed 1/6 FTE (0.1667) for Surveys 2 and 3 combined. Semester long courses should be reported with no more than 1/12 FTE (0.0834). However, grades K-8 may report minutes and FTE greater than 1/6 or 1/12 if the instruction provided exceeds 250 minutes weekly. To help with this there is a checkbox under Florida Reports Setup > District Options called “Cap FTE to 250 minutes for 09-12 Blended Learning Courses over 250 Class Minutes, Weekly” that should be enabled by your MIS person.

There are no guidelines for the number of minutes for direct instruction or online instruction time. The scheduled direct instruction and the scheduled online instruction time would count for the total seat time. Both the direct instruction and the online instruction time should be reflected on the student schedule.

The student schedule which includes the face-to-face direct instruction and online instruction time is an internal district document and is not reported as two separate records. The student schedule should equal the instruction minutes for the week (combination of face-to-face and online).

The only field that is set to reflect that the course is blended is the Blended Learning Course flag.

Note on Alternative School Programs

For the students in alternative school programs taking a courses where the curriculum is coming from a virtual provider but using blended learning with regular district teachers, these courses would be reported like regular seat time courses, no virtual school number school be assigned to the school of instruction.

Online Course Flag

The online course flag was used to designate courses that satisfy the online course graduation requirement for the students. This graduation requirement was phased out in the 2024-25 school year and is no longed required.

Distance Learning Indicator

Distance Learning Delivery Indicator denotes that the student and the instructor are separated in time and/or place during more than 50% of the instruction. Note this field is only needed for Adult students in WDIS programs.

Virtual School Reporting Cheat Sheet

Below is a “cheat sheet” to help you with coding the Online Course Provider and Virtual Instruction Provider for virtual schools.

School Number	Online Course Provider	Virtual Instruction Provider
7001	No	YES
7004	No	No
7006	YES	No
7023	No	No

Virtual Learning Labs

Virtual Learning Labs are when students are taking courses during the regular school day, in a district facility, from FLVS. The district is under contract with FLVS to provide the instruction, but the district will report the course in the student and teacher course schedule formats. See the FTE General Instructions for more information.

For these courses you would report them with the school of instruction as the traditional school number. You must record attendance for these courses just like regular courses, you may need to setup the staff who is in the lab with the students as a co-teacher with modify access so they can enter the attendance.

Location of Student data element must be “T” for online courses via contract with FLVS. Focus will report this like a regular virtual course with no FTE in Survey 2,3 and in Survey 4 the FTE will be reported if the student completes the class.

7001 – District Virtual Instruction Program Provider

Use school number 7001 for virtual courses offered by the district through a contract with a virtual instruction provider, FLVS or FL colleges. In this scenario, the program is operated completely by the provider, FLVS or college.

Key coding for data elements for 7001 are:

Requires Virtual Instruction Provider field
NO Online Course Provider
Location of Student must be N or S

For 7001, students must also have a Virtual Instruction Provider assigned on their enrollment line that is valid from the Appendix CC. If you are responsible for the 7001 school data entry and do not see this field please contact your district MIS office.

7023 – District Virtual Instruction Program District

District Virtual Instruction Program (s. 1002.45 F.S.): these are full time virtual programs that are taught by district teachers using any curriculum they choose.

Key coding for data elements for 7023 are:

NO Virtual Instruction Provider
NO Online Course Provider
Location of Student must be N or S

7004 – District Franchise of FLVS

Florida school districts may choose to enter an agreement with FLVS to operate an FLVS district franchise. These franchises are district virtual schools with district administrators and district teachers who provide virtual instruction for district students. These schools use FLVS curriculum, other educational resources, the FLVS Learning Management System (LMS), and FLVS Student Information System (SIS). FLVS also provides training and mentoring for district teachers and administrators. PAEC and NEFEC also operate virtual franchises under 7004.

Key data elements:

NO Virtual Instruction Provider
NO Online Course Provider
Location of student must be N or S.

If a student is a 7004 full-time student receiving ESE services virtually, you must code the therapy as though it is occurring at a school site, or through the district virtual franchise. This is assuming that the therapist is employed or contracted by the district.

7006 – District Virtual Course Offerings and Florida Approved Courses

School district virtual course offerings (s. 1003.498 F.S.): this is for students who want to take virtual courses in addition to their regular courses in a B&M. Either district teachers can teach the curriculum or the course providers can provide the teachers. School districts can contract with approved providers to offer approved Online Course Providers courses. School 7006 is for part time students only.

NO Virtual Instruction Provider
Requires Online Course Provider Field (Note: this field can be set to ZZZ if this is not Applicable but it cannot be N/A which is blank)
Location of Student must be N or S
Online Course Provider is 314, 315, 316, 317, 318, 319, 321, or 324 then the Course Number must be on the Virtual Online Course Provider Reference file – F71485

Funding and Survey 4

Virtual schedules need to be reported in all appropriate surveys. Districts receive estimated funding throughout the school year based on what is reported in these surveys. However, the total funding is only awarded for successful course completion (passing grades). At the end of the year after Survey 4, estimated funding is trued up with what is reported for the successful completions.

Only virtual courses reported in Survey 2 or 3 can be reported for FTE funding beyond the 180-day school year and before the deadline for amending Survey 4. In Survey 2 and 3 FTE is still reported as 0 for virtual courses.

In Survey period 4 districts report actual FTE for students who complete virtual courses.

In order for Focus to report FTE for virtual course completion the following must be entered:

Student virtual schedules must be setup and checked for accuracy
Grades must be entered for each course on the student schedule. It is best to use post final grades for this, otherwise the grades may not pull in the extract to DOE. If you manually enter grades you have to have the correct school selected in the top right hand corner of the screen.

In order for the grade to match the student’s schedule the following must be the same on the grade and schedule records:

Course Number
Term *NOTE: Term is when the student took the course NOT the content of the course*
School of Instruction
For VLLs with Location of Student of T, this field must also match as well

If a student does not complete the course for Survey 4, you should enter a “WP” grade for the student so that an “IP” grade is not submitted.

EOC Virtual Courses 50/50 Scenario

For students who take one semester of the course in brick and mortar and one semester in virtual, the EOC assessment must still be calculated as 30% of the final course grade. In Focus, even if the full year grade is not associated with the virtual school, as long as the appropriate semester grade is the FTE will be reported correctly for that term, even though the semester is not in course history and Affects GPA is not checked. However, there must a value for Credits Attempted and Credits Earned.

Preliminary Verification

Prior to submitting Survey 4 the district should run a Student Course Initial in HTML Preview mode and review the column Course Grade. Alternatively, districts can submit the student course format to DQ2 to do preliminary verification of 2H errors. For the virtual courses, if the Course Grade shows “IP” that means the student did not complete the course, the record will reject.

Post-Submission Review

After sending Survey 4 files, review the F71134 report which shows district FTE reported for the prior year, the current year and the difference, as well as FTE to be nulled (DJJ, Virtual Schools, and Franchises). The report assists districts with ensuring DJJ and Virtual FTE data are accurately reported.