RITS Student Identifier Policies

School districts vary on how they keep and transmit student data. Suggesting commonly accepted ways of entering data can help decrease duplicates, increase the overall effectiveness of RITS and minimize confusion for the district user. Please read these suggested guidelines for using RITS to search for and assign SASIDs.

• Conduct a student search first! Chances are good that your student already has a SASID, even if they are new to school.

• Use full legal names for all students, this includes the complete middle name whenever possible.

• Please follow the name that appears on the student's birth certificate for entry into the RITS, if it is available.

• Use NMN in the middle name field if the birth certificate states there is no legal middle name. 

• Only use letters and common punctuation in the name fields. The only acceptable punctuation is a - dash, a space, and an ' apostrophe.

• Use spaces to separate multiple names except when hyphenation is used on legal documentation. The RITS Matching Engine treats a hyphen as a different character and could miss a match on a name that uses a space instead. Also, be aware hyphenated names are frequently reversed.

• If a student's name ends with 'Junior', please enter it in the last name field with the last name first, then a space, then Jr without a period.

• Don't use nicknames, like "Johnny" for John, as these are variables and hard to track.

• Use Roman numerals to indicate generation number.

• Always check legal documentation for the correct birth date. Be aware that many foreign birth certificates have the month and day reversed from American formats.
• Be careful not to use the birth certificate issue date instead of the date of birth. 
• Enter the date of birth as MM/DD/YYYY, including the back slashes between month/day and day/year.
• Check to make sure that the Date of Birth for your record entry makes sense with the Grade chosen.
• If the handwriting on registration forms is poor, check with parents or other documentation. A 4 can easily be mistaken for a 9. Date of birth discrepancies are one of the leading causes of duplicate SASID assignment.

• When submitting a student record via the RITS Website you don't have the same restrictions on format for the LASID that an ADE system batch file does. You can enter any number you would like that is 14 characters or less. If you don't have a number to go into this field, at least enter your four digit district code, as this information will help Case Managers if your request comes under review.

Preschool and Kindergarten

When entering preschool or kindergarten aged students into RITS before the start of the school year, mark them as non-attending. When they arrive at school in the fall, mark them as attending.

Increasingly, students are being assigned SASIDs before entering kindergarten if they have enrolled in other programs for which they receive public funding. It is important to search for students even if they haven't been enrolled in school before.