Discussion Topic: The Choice Process“Would an all-online choice enrollment process hinder enrollment?”

Schools Create their Online Profiles Provide details about programming,

school culture, expectations, student outcomes, how applicants will be selected, etc.

Parent Applies to Desired School(s) May apply to any number of schools Special requirements for certain schools or

programs will be made apparent Deadline for 1st Round application = Jan.30

Parent Accepts Offer for Enrollment Parents can view status of each application at

any time (pending, offer for enrollment, waitlisted, enrollment offer accepted, or enrollment offer declined)

May be offered multiple schools, but may only accept one

Offers must be accepted by mid-February

Parent “Shops” Online for Schools Presented with Neighborhood school first Ability to view other schools, based on

filters (proximity, programming, etc.) Views detailed info for each school,

including any qualification steps required

Schools Manage Enrollment Offers and Waitlists As families decline offers, school can make

more offers from waitlist Schools have real-time line of sight to

enrolled students, waitlisted students, and students who declined enrollment offers

Schools Run their Lotteries Lottery tool built online by central resource

(district-managed schools) or school staff (charters)

School leader runs his/her own lottery via online lottery tool

Offers extended to families in early February

Quantitative Polling Results: The Choice Process

*Would an all-online choice enrollment process hinder enrollment?

*Question from the BoE

No Probably Not Probably So Yes Not Sure0

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Quantitative Polling Results: The Choice Process

What is your support level for implementing an online enrollment system for Jeffco families (not to be confused with a centrally-administered common enrollment system)?

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Qualitative Polling Results: The Choice Process

• “I think an online choice process would be more organized than our current process and close up some loopholes that currently exist. It may also give us data on what people want.”

• “It is important for parents to get to the schools and meet with the administration to learn if the school will be a good fit. In other districts with all-online processes, online school shopping has taken the place of school visits, increasing student churn and leading to more uncertainty. Also, an all-online process could discriminate against those without internet access.”

• “An on-line system would be fine, but I'm not in support of a centralized enrollment system for the district. It is very valuable for parents and students to visit the school they are interested in prior to enrolling into the program. I clear understanding of choice programs will reduce the number of student transfers.”

• “I feel the wording for this question is confusing and can be misinterpreted. Therefore, I answered it in a manner that reflects my concern that a vote in support for this process will move us toward an automated system that will disproportionately favor charter schools, thereby starving neighborhood schools of students and resources. I do not want the failed system Denver is using to be implemented in Jeffco.”

• “My only concern would be families that do not have access to computers. They could log on at their home schools, but this may become awkward for families if they were applying and choicing in to another school.”

• “Enrollment and registration has already largely migrated to an online process; it makes sense to support choice enrollment online as well. A clearly defined Scope of Work should articulate how online choice enrollment would and would not be utilized.”

• “It really depends on how the program was set up and administered. At this point, I think question #1 is really a too broad.”

• “Need to know how this will effect GT Center programming.”

• “Parents/students should always visit a school in person.”

• “Families who don't have computer access could be served by opening computer access for the choice process in our schools.”

Qualitative Feedback Results: The Choice Process• Equity for both neighborhood & charter

• Scope creep? documented agreements

• Access – computer access + support

• School owns the data; school leader has access to their data

• System should inform parents of their choices

• Transparency is key

• Maintain scope

• No flipping the centralized enrollment “switch”

• It strikes me, that if waiting lists were made public as part of this flow, it could actually affect the demand – long waiting lists can dissuade people from signing up. It could also lead to public pressure for new programs, which would be demand / addressable market that the enrollment system wouldn’t necessarily measure. i.e., in response to question 1, it could in some respects change enrollment flow – if not hinder it directly – and move highly relevant demand from current to forward.

• Re question 2, shopping workflow can create demand. A great example of this is internet browsers…a majority of folks leave the browser configured to whatever default home page (and therefore search engine) the browser company distributes the browser with. Whatever the default selection is could experience an enrollment boost in the first year. One could envision registering first, ticking off a selection of filtration items, and having an expert system suggest a short list of schools; this would create a distinctly different demand pattern from just listing the neighborhood school first.

• In the future, someone could flip a switch, and this system turns in to a centralized lottery with a take-it-or-leave-it assignment – which a number of us on the committee really don’t like. How do we ascertain that this system doesn’t turn into that?

Qualitative Feedback Results: The Choice Process• My “neighborhood school” is widely considered in my neighborhood to be Jefferson Academy, because that’s where the vast majority

of kids go. People in my neighborhood call Semper our “default school”. Semper has a checkered history, of which most parents are aware. I know many dozens of families in our precinct/elementary boundary area, and over the course of the past six years, have only met one family that sent its kids through Semper. Everyone else went to JA or Woodrow. Most parents don’t know the difference between a charter and a District-managed school, and don’t care…to them the “neighborhood school” is where the kids from the neighborhood go. To many, therefore, listing the “neighborhood” school first, and as something other than is generally understood to be one’s neighborhood school, will be profoundly puzzling, because no one they know goes there. I understand this may be a parochial concern, bounded as it is to locales where the CK charters have high market share, but thought I’d offer it anyway. I frankly would like to move beyond the neighborhood v charter descriptors and just talk about schools and programs. I’m not sure the system should list any particular school “first”; might be better to ask parents, through an entry portal, what they’re looking for….

• I want to echo concerns that schools should be allowed to indicate eligibility, where permitted by law, charter, or District policy, for program offerings. Great example would be IB at Standley Lake, entry for which is merit-based. Another would be schools that want to get parents in to understand fit….if you choose Compass or Mt. Phoenix based on test scores and don’t know what Montessori or Waldorf is, or Woodrow and you don’t like CK and lots of homework, you will just have a fit problem that increases student churn. In NYC, folks have found that moving to online completely destroyed the concept of neighborhood schools, as families “surfed” for school choices based on test scores alone, sometimes realizing poor fit, and often putting their kids on buses for much longer periods of time. As choices multiply, fit criteria become important. Online shouldn’t be a substitute for visiting and getting to know the school of interest.

• I think it is critical, to the extent decentralization / site-based management is the future, that the data associated with enrollment be made available to the schools, which will have responsibility to a) run their lotteries b) plan their resources, and c) assess demand in their own ways to d) inform their program choices. I don’t think this vision of the future is supported by running DB queries against a central DB server. I’d rather see a bunch of network nodes polling each other for DB updates, or some sort of distributed hashtag system (if not fully relational) that lets schools “own” the application and the data…this is the best of all worlds, because schools can be “independent” to the degree required by their educational model, and the District can have central data reporting as well. I do think that this is an area in which the new District data committee could be helpful, from an architecture and privacy perspective, and in which the principals – including our charter and option principals – should have the primary (and final?) voice…