September 17, 2009

Dear Parents and Guardians:

I am writing to inform you about new guidelines from the U. S. Department of Education (USDE) regarding the collection of data on race and ethnicity for public school students.

The USDE requires all state and local education institutions to collect information on ethnicity and race for all our students. This information is used for state and federal accountability reporting, as well as for reporting to the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

The federal government has developed a new standard for collecting and reporting this data in order to provide a more accurate picture of thenation’s ethnic and racial diversity. These reporting categories were used in the 2000 Census.

This new standard enables our students to be identified in both ethnic and racial classifications and in more than one racial category if applicable. In the past, enrollment forms allowed students to be identified in only one category.

Beginning with this 2009 – 2010 school year, all families of newly enrolled students and all returning students will complete a brief form to re-identify their student’s ethnicity and race using the new federal standard. A separate form must be completed on each student.

Please use the available online form to fill out this information on each of your children. Pearson ECS campus code is 161. You will also need your student’s ID number. We will send those home to you along with a copy of this letter. The address in English and Spanish is:

http://k-12.pisd.edu/Ethnicity_Race_English

http://k-12.pisd.edu/Ethnicity_Race_Spanish

Please complete this information for your children as soon as possible. Thank you for helping us collect the data for the new USDE guidelines.

Best Regards,

Cheri Izbicki, Ed.D.

Principal