This School District is Putting Equity in the Driver’s Seat

This school district is breaking down barriers by helping families navigate school choice at public schools by educating them about the options available for their students and by offering easy, equitable access to enrollment through an online student application and lottery system.

In many ways, Colorado’s Greeley-Evans School District 6 is a microcosm of our nation.

With immigrants, English-language learners (ELLs), and families of varying socioeconomic backgrounds, District 6 represents not just school districts across the country but also the United States at large.

The district is growing, steadily but surely, and a diverse population is at the core of what makes the community so special. And it’s why the district has found success amid increasing public school choice.

Greeley School District 6 was first established in 1870 by the founders of the Union Colony. Evans had its own school district, also established in 1870. In 1962, Evans and Greeley merged school districts, establishing Greeley-Evans School District 6.

Today, District 6 is Colorado’s 12th largest school district and serves more than 23,000 students in 27 district-operated schools and six charter schools (which account for educating nearly 30% of district students).

Much of that district’s growth has come in the last decade.

Shifting populations in the larger community as a whole are reflected in current student demographics:

• One of every four students have a first or primary language that’s not English
• 79 different languages are spoken in the homes of the district’s 23,183 students
• 33% are active or former English-language learners
• 65% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch

...But Growth Comes with Challenges

In many diverse areas across the United States, educators are concerned with creating inclusive school populations:

• On average, students in socioeconomically and racially diverse schools — regardless of a student’s own economic status — have stronger academic outcomes than students in schools with concentrated poverty.
• Classrooms in which students learn collectively alongside their peers whose perspectives and backgrounds are different from their own are beneficial to all students.
• This includes middle-class white students, because these environments promote creativity, motivation, deep learning, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.
• Integrated schools produce better outcomes for all, in particular, students in integrated schools have higher average test scores.

For example, on the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) given to fourth graders in math, low-income students attending more affluent schools scored roughly two years of learning ahead of low-income students in high-poverty schools.

The road to college becomes significantly more likely when comparing students with similar socioeconomic backgrounds, as students at more affluent schools are 68% more likely to enroll at a four-year college than their peers at high-poverty schools.

Ensuring Families Can Access School Choice in Districts

Educators are also concerned about ensuring disadvantaged populations can participate in choice. In the past, school choice access to it has mirrored privilege.

Education leaders today can acknowledge that, traditionally, to exercise choice about the school one’s child attends, parents/guardians needed free time or job flexibility (like a white collar position that offers personal days). Spending hours applying to multiple schools just isn’t feasible if parents work shifts or multiple jobs or can’t afford childcare.

Research today overwhelmingly shows that mobile access is most effective for extending choice to disadvantaged populations.

A K-12 online student enrollment system (like SchoolMint Enroll) grants equitable access because it:

• Is available during all hours of the day, on-demand, via computer, tablet, and phone
• Is easily translated into multiple languages
• Eliminates human bias about who does/doesn’t deserve special treatment
• Keeps families informed about their child’s enrollment status through automatic notifications

In Colorado, open enrollment is integral to the school landscape, dating back to the Public Schools of Choice Act of 1990. Colorado allows parents to opt out of sending kids to their default neighborhood school in favor of a school of their choice, without restrictions.

In District 6, this number has seen a steady increase in recent years, which can be attributed to additional options, including six charter schools and three magnet schools. Families can also come to the district from outside district boundaries, which has accelerated growth and changing student demographics.

District 6 has been proactive in protecting equity and driving integration. Early on, school leaders identified a need to redraw school boundaries in order to balance racial and socioeconomic diversity across the system and promote equitable access for all students.

Today, District 6 buses drive 4,125 miles every day. Schools and classrooms better mirror the community and honor the district’s values and beliefs, including viewing diversity as an asset.

Supporting ELL Families in District 6

The District 6 Newcomer Program is for newly arrived students from other countries who speak a language other than English as their primary language.

The program begins with an orientation for all families as well as an orientation for newly arrived high school students. It supports students at their home school during their first year of school in the United States, provides family engagement programming, and offers opportunities for families to connect to the community.

Engaging families has been a hallmark of District 6, and this is just one example of the care with which the district welcomes students and families who are new to the U.S.

Breaking Down Barriers to Access School Choice: A Priority for District 6

How families become aware of their school options is complicated. And it’s doubly complicated for non-native speakers.

Paper enrollment processes have proven to be inequitable as they require families to drive from school to school to submit the appropriate application forms, documentation, and, for families with multiple children, complete most forms in duplicate. This problem compounds itself if a family needs to return with missing documents or to correct inaccurate forms.

This makes paper-based student enrollment a daunting endeavor for working families, single parents, and those with limited work flexibility or without access to transportation.

In District 6, the open enrollment process has evolved over the years from a paper-driven process, with school-specific timelines, deadlines, and processes, to a one-and-done approach through a powerful online student enrollment system.

For the enrollment team at District 6, a paper process resulted in weeks upon weeks of data entry to input the 1,500+ applications received each year.

Of course, the headaches didn’t stop with managing student applications. After processing paper applications, the enrollment team then needed to efficiently run District 6’s student lottery and placement process.

Previously, managing priorities, offers, acceptances, waitlists, and communications with families overtaxed the team.

Last year, the team evaluated the process they were using, including a process built using Google forms.

While they concluded the process was more beneficial to families than paper (it meant no more trekking across the district and putting in applications at each school), the digital forms were not much easier to glean enrollment data insights for district staff.

Managing their student application and lottery process through Google forms proved to be nearly just as time consuming for the team.

They knew there had to be a better way to collect applications, run easy student lotteries, and assign accurate placements — and, overall, manage student enrollment better for all stakeholders.

The Search Begins: Finding an Equitable K-12 Online Student Enrollment System

District 6 began the search to secure a true online student enrollment platform, one that could make their application and lottery process easier, for the 2019–2020 school year open enrollment period (which just closed in December 2018).

They needed a software that would deliver a truly equitable enrollment experience — and they didn’t have to look very far for the answer.

District 6  found it in a neighbor: Denver Public Schools (DPS). DPS, just one year prior, had pioneered a similar solution.

That solution was SchoolMint Enroll.

District 6’s search for a modern, easy-to-use, and accessible-to-families solution was over. From the administrative perspective, they decided to use SchoolMint Enroll because the K-12 student enrollment software could:

• Provide families with mobile access and translations.
• Ensure fair and equitable enrollment access for all families participating in the district’s school choice process.
• Deliver real-time data to the enrollment team by providing data intelligence and streamlined administrative processes.
• Eliminate burdensome data entry and time-consuming data analysis.

“We believe SchoolMint will help us build community trust with an equitable and transparent process and improve our channels of communication with parents,” says Andrew Palmer, Director of Student Information Services at District 6.

“With a multilingual, mobile-friendly app that allows families to complete digital applications from their smartphones, we are leveling the playing field for all of our students and their families.”

But perhaps most importantly, moving to an enrollment system with easy dashboards and data reports is enabling District 6’s enrollment office to move forward with better data insights.

Palmer is watching district enrollment numbers closely, designing and running test lottery scenarios in SchoolMint Enroll’s sandbox environment. He’s looking forward to the ease with which his team will be able to communicate lottery results, offers, and waitlist information with families in the coming months.

This year is an especially personal one for him, too: Palmer’s five-year-old daughter is part of the choice application process this year and will participate in District 6’s K-8 magnet school lottery.

This experience offers Palmer a unique perspective: “I live just outside the district like so many of our families. This is real for me too.”

Looking ahead to next year, some goals Palmer has tentatively set forth for his team would be to:

• Expand on the centralized process they established this year by including all district schools and charters under one timeline.
• Establish a plan for training school principals and leaders. This will ensure that they are comfortable going SchoolMint Enroll to view dashboards of their enrollment trends, their school applications, and enrollment activity, and be able to act as the first line of customer service for families.

So far, Palmer feels confident in the district’s success:

“In District 6, open enrollment is a driving force for promoting equitable access for all students. It allows students the opportunity to pursue individual goals and interests via academic pathways, specialized programs, and learning environments. As a result of equitable access via open enrollment with SchoolMint Enroll, we are finding students benefit academically and social-emotionally and are prepared for life beyond the classroom.”

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