Streamline the Charter School Online Enrollment Process: Managing Lotteries & Waitlists With AdmissionsPlus

A school’s enrollment and admissions process can be both time-consuming and frustrating at best. With the recent shift to even more virtual and online processes, finding a solution to enroll children in school successfully needs to be flexible, secure, and mobile-ready.

With ever-increasing demand, charter schools also face their own unique admissions and enrollment challenges. Last year, there were more than 7,400 public charter schools providing individualized education and learning opportunities to more than 3 million students throughout the U.S. And millions more would attend a charter school if they had the option.

With so many students seeking charter school enrollment, charter schools have employed a lottery system whereby students are selected via a random drawing process. And where seats are limited, students not selected initially are put on a waiting list. To fairly provide everyone with the opportunity for enrollment, both a randomized and blind lottery is essential.

To best handle enrollment, charter schools can benefit from investing in an online enrollment management system to streamline the process. Rediker Software’s newest online admissions management system, AdmissionsPlus, is equipped with the tools to efficiently run a charter school’s online enrollment and lottery and waitlist operations. Completely customizable for each grade and program, AdmissionsPlus’ fully responsive online forms allow registrars to track and communicate with applicants through the entire process. Once a student’s enrollment information is submitted, the data is easily sent to the school’s student information system for tracking, communication, analysis, and decision-making.

Charter schools can also securely adjust waitlist rankings for a prospective student, batch generate and assign unique lottery numbers to selected applicants, and launch custom email notifications informing families of their child’s newly assigned waitlist or lottery number. And when a prospective family withdraws their application, the waitlist rearranges instantly and other families are informed of their new waitlist status via email.

With Rediker’s new AdmissionsPlus, parents, students and school admissions offices can also benefit from the following convenient features:

• Adjust waitlist ranking for a prospective student based on currently attending sibling(s) and randomly generated lottery number. This sort order gives a waitlist order.
• Customizable lottery allows schools to sort on up to six fields of their choice in the order of their preference.
• As prospects accept offered seats, the total number of open seats is adjusted appropriately to help track enrollment.
• Virtually conduct and manage easy lottery and wait list operations by applicant or by grade level. Calculate the number of open seats depending on the active student count from AdminPlus.

“Charter schools in the U.S. continue to face growing demand in their communities, with tens of thousands of students on charter waitlists in the state of Massachusetts, as just one example,” said Marketing Director John Schreck. “At the same time, families expect a seamless, mobile-friendly experience as they research and apply to charter schools. Here at Rediker, we have worked closely with hundreds of charter schools and charter school companies across the country to provide the best technology to serve their students and families,” he said.