Hernando County School District has taken a systematic approach to replace a decades-old process with a district-wide enrollment platform. Now they’re delivering access equity and leveling the playing field for all families.
Hernando County School District serves their county of the same name in western Florida. Across 22 schools — three magnet schools, one virtual school, and 18 traditional public schools — the district enrolls more than 22,000 students.
With so many students to serve, the district’s leaders don’t shy away from a challenge. They’re deeply committed to serving their community and are the kind of educators who put student success at the heart of every decision they make.
For instance:
- When budgets were focused on improving student outcomes, the district dove right in, investing time and energy into graduation rates, which they’ve successfully raised.
- Just last year, they surpassed the state average and grew five percent, graduating 88% of students.
- Equally impressive were the results at the leading Weeki Wachee High School, which reported a graduation rate of 97% — a 9% gain over the prior year.
So when a major policy change came down from the state capital, Hernando County School District’s leaders rolled up their sleeves.
Open Enrollment Legislative Changes
Beginning in the 2017–2018 school year, Florida Statute Section 1002.31 directed each school district to develop a “controlled open enrollment plan.”
Under this legislation, each district school board and charter school would be mandated to allow a parent from any school district in Florida to enroll in and transport their child to any public school that had not reached capacity. (Note: the controlled open enrollment plan is in addition to the existing choice programs: magnet schools, alternative schools, special programs, advanced placement, and dual enrollment.)
Additionally, the new legislation requires that district (and charter school) capacity determinations must be current and identified on their respective websites.
Districts must provide preferential treatment in their controlled open enrollment processes to:
- Dependent children of active duty military personnel whose move resulted from military orders
- Children who have been relocated due to a foster care placement in a different school zone
- Children who move due to a court-ordered change in custody due to separation, divorce, or the serious illness or death of a custodial parent
- Students residing in the district
With this new law, Hernando County School District immediately found themselves in front of a hurdle: little investment had been made in the district’s enrollment infrastructure over the past few years, and data-driven decisions were lagging.
That’s where 18-year district veteran Angela M. Kennedy came in. Her call? To head Hernando County School District’s Department of School Choice.
Kennedy knew the expansion of open enrollment, when coupled with the increased popularity of the district’s three open choice magnet school programs, was going to require a significant level of change.
Inherited Issues
Compounding the lack of transparency in Hernando County School District’s enrollment data were complexities and inefficiencies in gathering student enrollment data.
To gather student applications for the 500 spots available in their three magnet schools, Hernando County School District was using a part-paper, part-online student enrollment process, which resulted in weeks of data entry and verification for more than 2,050 applications.
Additionally, the team was using an antiquated, local server-based database that had been built by IT professionals who’d long since departed the district.
Managing priorities, offers, acceptances, waitlists, and communications with families was naturally overtaxing Kennedy and the other staff. And with multiple data-entry points (local database and Excel sheets), gleaning data insights for district staff proved to be nearly impossible.
Kennedy knew they could do better for all stakeholders. And she knew taking the entire enrollment process online would be a start. For that, she turned to application and lottery management with SchoolMint Enroll.
Finding Clarity
Using SchoolMint Enroll to manage the district’s enrollment processes meant that families could apply and upload documents online (from a mobile phone or computer), making the student data instantly available to administrators. This almost entirely eliminated manual data entry.
After first deploying SchoolMint Enroll for managing the student lottery at their three magnet schools, the improved administrative efficiencies were tangible.
“We’ve saved 400 hours of manpower in just communicating lottery results alone,” Kennedy says.
The district also found the data clarity they need to comply with Florida’s new law.
When Kennedy logs into SchoolMint Enroll’s application and lottery management platform, regardless of the time of year, her current, real-time enrollment numbers are right there.
“Our new processes allow us to easily report capacity determinations as well as transparency for the three preferential categories identified by the state and the additional categories identified by the board,” she explains.
That’s primarily why, this year, the school board allocated the financing to expand the district’s use of SchoolMint’s application and lottery management tool for all 22 schools. The efficacy of the pilot program drove the decision to expand, Kennedy says, admitting it’s easier to invest after you can see it work.
SchoolMint Enroll’s transparency and ease-of-use has been a win for families too. Now, with just a mobile phone, families can:
- Create a SchoolMint Enroll account
- In their native language, apply to Hernando’s schools
- Track their enrollment status, such as waitlist position
- Accept or decline their student’s placement
“The family experience was drastically improved with modernizing the process and bringing access online,” says Kennedy. Mobile access is more fair and equitable. “We’ve reached more families than ever before.”
With SchoolMint’s enrollment portal, families can log in for acceptance status updates at any time. For the district, SchoolMint ENroll is providing a source of truth for all enrollment information to better inform families of the details of their application status.
“SchoolMint has improved community trust with an equitable and transparent process. Our channels of communication with parents are more open than ever, before” says Kennedy. “The reception has been overwhelmingly positive.”
Navigating New Challenges
With SchoolMint Enroll’s application and lottery management platform also comes powerful enrollment dashboards. And Kennedy is using real-time data and predictive enrollment reporting to advise the board and superintendent of enrollment trends and capacity.
Those enrollment insights are proving to be critical — far beyond the district’s initial need.
Since controlled open enrollment is now an integral part of the school landscape in Florida, many education leaders know this can translate to fluctuating enrollment trends.
That can impact the bottom line, especially when funding is already tight. While administrators can no longer assume past enrollment numbers would be guaranteed in future years, they can look to real-time data for guidance.
Data-based findings are central to shaping sound policy, and investments in data systems or evaluations to inform future resource allocation decisions are very important even in tight budget times.
In Hernando, this is shaping out to be true. Moving to an enrollment system with dashboards and data reports is enabling Hernando’s enrollment office to move forward with better data insights. And Kennedy is thrilled to see multiple benefits of their investment into SchoolMint Enroll.
As she currently works to prepare all enrollment to be facilitated with SchoolMint for the 2019–2020 school year, Kennedy has set forth these goals:
- Expand on the centralized process they established this year by including all district schools.
- Establish a plan for training school principals and leaders.
- Ensure school leaders are comfortable going into SchoolMint Enroll to view dashboards of their enrollment trends, their school applications, and enrollment activity, and plan and staff accordingly.
Kennedy feels confident in the district’s success so far — and, most importantly, in their future position.
“Hernando County’s school choice is well-positioned now to serve families and optimize district resources,” she concludes.
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