Section Number Length

Per the EMIS State Reporting Requirements:

Courses and sections are submitted to ODE in a string of characters that cannot exceed a total of 20 in length. This string is in the following format (no spaces, dashes are included):

The IRN number is assigned by ODE and is always six digits. This is followed by a dash (-) then the course number. The course number can be anywhere from 6-10 digits in length, depending on the course. All courses start with a 6 digit ‘base’ number. For year-long courses that are semesterized, we add a .1 or .2 to indicate the semester it should be taught in. In addition, some courses may have one or more letter suffixes on the end to indicate ESL, Block, Summer School, Gifted, etc. For a detailed explanation of course numbering, refer to the Course Numbering & Naming Standards. After the course number is another dash (-) and then the section number.

Example 1:

Open

In the example above, the course number is 8 digits long, so we can use up to 4 digits for the section number.

Example 2:

Open

In this example, the course number has an additional character, giving it a total length of 9. This means that the section number cannot exceed 3 digits in length so as not to go past 20 characters for the entire string.