How To Use This Application

Overview

The application allows you to view information on education-related organizations stored in the MDE database. Organization is a generic term for schools, school districts, programs, colleges, libraries, and other organizations that have worked with MDE in the past. Each organization has a state-issued ID, such as 0625-01 for the St. Paul Public School District.

Organizations are are organized by type, such as type 01, for organizations within an Independent School District, including the districts themselves, schools, and programs. Schools and programs have an additional classification, such as 32 for a public Senior High School.

The organization ID is made up of parts. In 0625-01 for the St. Paul Public School District, 0625 is the district number and 01 is the type number. Schools and programs within a district also have a school or site number (the terms may be used interchangeably--since not all items are schools, this application uses the term site). For example, Horace Mann School has an ID of 0625-01-518, for a district number of 0625, type number of 01 and site number of 518. The site number is zero for a top-level organization, such as a school district.

See the Reference Data to the left for more on the type codes and classifications. The advanced search options allow you to search based on these type codes and more.

Tags mark an organization as an LEA, a charter or elementary school, higher education, and so on. Each organization can have multiple tags. See Specialty Tagged Collections to the left to view the available tags.

Contacts are people tied to an organization by a particular role, such as a school principal, superintendent, or school nurse.

Groups collect organizations together, including the districts that belong to a particular RMIC region, organizations in a Title III consortium, and so on. Groups also have member organizations, such as school districts within a region.

Typically, a group with have one organization acting as the head of the group, such as Region 7 TIES acts as the head for the group of school districts within the region.

Searching

The Search page allows you to search on any education-related organization in the MDE database. Enter in:

Any part of the name of the organization, such as elk river. Case does not matter
The MDE-assigned ID number for the organization, such as 0728-01 for the Elk River Public School District

You can enter in an old name for an organization, such as Hanska for the New Ulm Public School District. (This district used to be named New Ulm - Hanska.)

Tip: Enter as specific a name as possible. Words such as district, school, elementary, public, high and so on are used in many, many organization names. You'll also find a lot of names with Central, Lincoln, Lake, Area, and so on.

Built-In Lists

You can access built-in lists, such as a list of Minnesota school districts, from the following pages:

Advanced Searching

The advanced-search options are based on similar syntax to that used by major Internet search engines. In each case, you use a special key word, such as inactive: with a colon at the end. The colon is important and it tells the application you have entered a special search command. In this case, the inactive: option tells the application to include inactive organizations in the search.

Some of the advanced options include a value. In this case, never insert a space. Type the option, a colon, and the value all together (no spaces). For example, site:100 for only organizations with a site or school number of 100, or classification:32 for public Senior High Schools.

Searching for People

If you want to limit your search to just people associated with organizations, you can use the name: advanced-search option. For example, to search for everyone with bob in their name, use: name:bob. Case does not matter. In addition, a search on john will get you Johnson.

To search for a person who is a school nurse, use the role: advanced-search option. For example, to find all nurses with marianne in any part of the nurses' name, use role:nurse name:marianne.

Note that a role of School Nurse means the person a school district has told MDE is the contact for nursing and health-related issues, such as H1N1. The school nurse on file may not be the actual nurse at a school but instead the person whom the school district identified as handling public-health issues.

Searching for Organizations

You can use a number of advanced search options, as presented on the Search Help page, to narrow a search for organizations.

If you know the state type code for an organization, you can use the type: advanced-search option. For example, to find technical colleges (type 4), use type:4.

These advanced options can be combined. To find all top-level (or district-level) records for Intermediate Districts, use type:6 site:0. In this case, type:6 should have no space between type: and 6, same as for site: and 0. The site: option searches for the site or school number.

If you know the school classification number for an organization, you can use the classification: advanced-search option. This really helps with common names such as Lincoln or Washington.

Viewing Organizations

In the search results, you will see a list of organizations as well as a list of contacts, or a message that no items were found. Click on the name of any person or organization to see the details of that person or organization.

To find data, enter any part of an organization or contact name, such as "Elk" or "Smith".

I Cannot Find the Organization I am Looking For

The name stored in MDE ORG may not be the name with which you are familiar. In addition, names have often been abbreviated to fit within the limited space available on the legacy system.

Try a less-specific search. For example, if you are searching for Willow River High School and see no results, try removing one of the words. For example, search for Willow River High. (And notice that Willow River reports that the name of their school is really Willow River Secondary.)

Advanced Searches for Contacts

For advanced searches, do not put a space after the colon. For example do not insert a space in name:Marley.

Contact specialized searches
Syntax	Looks for
name:Marley	Only contact records with the given value as part of the contact's name. Do not put any space between name: and the name to look for, such as name:Marley.
role:nurse	Only contacts with 'nurse' or 'site' (verification coordinator) or 'head' (principal or superintendent--organization head) or 'dac' (district assessment) roles. These are the only roles supported at present. You must combine this with additional search criteria.

Advanced Searches for Organizations

By default, organization searches only look for active organizations. Use inactive: to also look for inactive organizations. Nutrition types, 78 and 79, are also disabled by default. Use type:78 or type:79 in your search criteria to search for these records.

For advanced searches, do not put a space after the colon. For example do not insert a space in type:84.

Organization specialized searches
Syntax	Looks for
district:625	Only top-level organization records with that district, or major, number.
site:100	Only organization records with that site, or school, number.
type:4	Only organization records of that organization type code. You can use more than one type. Either use the type: search term more than once, such as `type:1 type:3`, or you can use a hat character (`^`) as a separator, such as `type:1^3`.
nonpublic:	Short hand for `type:31^32^33`, the traditional set of nonpublic school type codes. These are not the only nonpublic codes, but the most searched.
children:10625000000	Only organization records with the same type code and district number as the passed-in state organization ID. You can use this to get the schools and programs within a district.
inactive:	Search all organization records, even if inactive (inactive in MARSS). This will mean that both active and inactive records will be included in the search results.
classification:10	Only organization records with that school classification number, such as 10 for elementary schools. You can use more than one classification. Either use the classification: search term more than once, such as `classification:10 classification:40`, or you can use a hat character (`^`) as a separator, such as `classification:10^40`.
tag:tagName	Only records tagged with tagName. Note: you can only search for one tag at a time.

MDE Organization Reference Glossary

How To Use This Application

Overview

Searching

Built-In Lists

Advanced Searching

Searching for People

Searching for Organizations

Viewing Organizations

Report Problem

How To Use This Application

Overview

Searching

Built-In Lists

Advanced Searching

Searching for People

Searching for Organizations

Viewing Organizations

Search Help

I Cannot Find the Organization I am Looking For

Advanced Searches for Contacts

Advanced Searches for Organizations

Report Problem

Issue Reported