Aliyya Swaby Photo
Almost a month after promising to improve, district leaders are rolling out new plans for making the “school choice” process easier for families.
Sherri Davis-Googe (at right in photo), director of choice and enrollment, previewed the plans at the first Board of Education meeting of 2016 Monday night at L.W. Beecher School, updating board and community members present on how the system for matching kids to schools will change.
In 2015, 7,773 students applied for spots in schools; 5,203 were placed. Those not placed remained in their original schools, and some were taken off waitlists for schools of choice if spots became available, she said.
Click here to see the presentation she made at the meeting.
Davis-Googe said she focused on kindergartners last year, merging kindergarten registration with the overall process, hosting kickoff sessions to inform parents and moving the kindergarten waitlist.
Click here to read more about last year’s choice process.
This year, the choice office will place students from the waitlist more quickly and be more responsive to families’ questions, Davis-Googe said. Rising ninth graders applying this February will have five options, not four, including their neighborhood schools. And families will have more access to useful data surrounding the process, so they can make informed decisions.
In 2014 – 15, 72 percent of kindergartners placed got their first choice; 78 percent of ninth-graders placed got their first choice.
Davis-Googe said she was using the percentage of students who got their first choice as one measure of parent satisfaction. “Our goal would be to have this number increase,” she said.
Newly elected board member Darnell Goldson, a former alder, contested the change in titling the process from “school lottery” to “school choice” last year. “Why not call it a lottery, make it clear it’s a crapshoot?” he suggested.
He asked Davis-Googe for more precise measures of parent satisfaction than first-choice percentages.
Davis-Googe said parents don’t get to choose, but they do get to select from a range of schools. “Everyone can’t go to school A,” she said. But parents should “do the work” of exploring more school options.
She said a “choice and enrollment advisory committee” would work on finding other measures of progress.
The committee will also be responsible for increasing family engagement, improving the placement system, setting enrollment goals and reviewing a 2012 redistricting report proposing new boundaries for school zoning.
Student board member Coral Ortiz asked how the office was reaching out students with questions about school choice. Davis-Googe said the guidance office hosts a fair for rising eighth graders, to engage them one-on-one.
School choice begins with a fair Feb. 3 at Floyd Athletic Center, and another Feb. 6 at East Rock and Wilbur Cross High Schools.