RSD’s New Enrollment Program

The Recovery School District (RSD) is following through on its commitments to New Orleans. The RSD recently released information about their new citywide enrollment program (commitment number 6), which will be effective for the 2012-13 school year. The new enrollment program is intended to address many of the problems associated with open enrollment, thereby improving the enrollment process for parents and students.

The new centralized enrollment system pertains to RSD schools only. A true citywide enrollment system would include all schools. As reported in the Times-Picayune, John White, the Superintendent of the RSD, believes that after seeing how the new system works, the OPSB will join for the 2013-14 school year.

But even though the RSD’s new enrollment system is not truly citywide, it is a major improvement over what it will replace. In previous years, parents filled out a separate application for every school. Now, they can apply to multiple RSD schools with one application per child. Parents can apply to up to eight schools, ranking the schools in order of their preference, and will be assigned to one. This means that individual schools will no longer manage their own enrollment, which allowed for limited oversight and sometimes varying rules and processes, and left many parents feeling frustrated.

Beginning this spring, applications will be processed by a computer program that uses algorithms to assign students to schools, similar to the enrollment system used by New York City public schools. When applications for a school exceed the school’s available capacity, the computer will consider, first, if the child in question has siblings at the school; second, if the child is currently enrolled in a closing or transforming school; and, third, if the child is in the school’s geographic catchment area. The remaining seats will be assigned randomly.

The third criterion is a response to the community’s desire for neighborhood schools. Starting next year, for K-8 schools, up to fifty percent of seats will be prioritized for student applicants who reside in a school’s geographic catchment area, of which the RSD has created six.

As for timeline, the new applications will be made available to families the second week of February, 2012. All applications will be due by March 31, 2012, for enrollment in the 2012-13 school year. After a month of processing the applications, every child will be notified of their placement offer during the first week of May. Parents and students who are unhappy with their offer then have the option to appeal and can apply for placement in other schools where seats are available.

We’ve looked at citywide open enrollment systems in other districts—Cambridge, San Diego, and New York City—to help us understand the issues that must be addressed in districts with an all-choice, open enrollment system.

• We found that even with a simple enrollment system, parents still need lots of information, and that the information should be available in many places, such as resources centers, schools fairs, handouts, school-based parent liaisons, robust websites, etc.
• We found that although citywide enrollment systems similar to the RSD’s have increased the number of students who are assigned to one of their top choices, as many as 10% to 28% are not. Districts that instate citywide enrollment systems should be clear about how school placements are made and about what parents and students can do if they are unhappy.
• We also found that it’s important to balance the push for neighborhood schools with school choice; students should not have to commute long distances to attend school, but at the same time parents should be able to choose what school is best for their child.

The RSD has made steps to ameliorate the problems other districts have faced when implementing citywide enrollment programs. They have made an effort to make it easier for parents to obtain information by creating parent-resource centers, holding public meetings, and keeping their website up-to-date, among other steps. They’ve made it clear what factors will be prioritized in the student placement process and the steps parents can take if they are unhappy with their child’s assignment.

It is important that the enrollment system be as transparent as possible for families and the New Orleans community. It should be clear and easy to understand how the student assignment process works, especially for those children who aren’t assigned one of their top choices.

We look forward to seeing the system in action and we hope parents, students, and schools are ultimately pleased with the outcomes.