Unit 4 online registration being turned off at 8:am Thursday, March 28th

EDIT: I said Friday, but I meant Thursday. Sorry!

This was a little bit of a surprise, especially for anyone waiting for the last moment. If you want to do your registration online, do it before 8:am!!

http://www.champaignschools.org/news/news_view.php?action=view&news_type=press_release&id_news=776

The final day of the Schools of Controlled Choice registration period will end tomorrow, March 28, 2013 at 7 p.m.

Parents beginning their registration online will need to come to the Family Information Center by 7 p.m. tomorrow to complete their applications and verify residency. If families do not complete this final step of verifying residency in person by tomorrow’s deadline, they will not be included in the assignment process. Families can also complete all of the necessary paperwork in person at the Family Information Center.

To reduce the number of incomplete applications, we will de-activate the online registration form tomorrow morning, March 28 at 8 a.m. to encourage parents to visit the Family Information Center on this final day. We believe this will help families ensure their applications are complete.

Since tomorrow is the last day of the registration period, we will have additional staff on hand until the Family Information Center closes at 7 p.m.

Registration Dashboard: The school selections are now a lot more open

 First, go here: http://choice.champaignschools.org/onlineforms2013/firstchoice.aspx

Yes, Unit 4 finally has a good (ie, decent) look at registration numbers. Armed with this knowledge (for those whom take advantage of it – not everyone will), I can see two things happening:

1. Some parents will want to “rush” to be first on the list (which is not counted at all – first or last gets the same priority), some parents will tarry until the end of March to see what the numbers look like. I am betting more will wait (of those that look at the dashboard).
2. Parents will see some “overchosen” schools and make different choices. I think that is a good thing – it increases the chances of getting the school you select for everyone involved.

The tricky part will be “is this too much information?” Will it lead to more confusion with statistics, proximity and priorities? Will the not-so-tech-savvy utilize this tool much by asking folks at the Family Information Center (FIC)?

Overall, I think it is a great thing; I have been looking forward to this information for several years. It is encouraging that the school district sees this as important as well.

Also, the vendor (enrolledU and his software partners) have fixed a number of problems, including the issue with seeing my child’s name, but at the cost of removing the notification of a sibling priority altogether. Probably safer than sorry, but I hope they meet a compromise next time. Also, they fixed an issue with picking the program which I had not noticed before.

PS – I still prefer pictures (ie, a pie chart). Maybe that’s just me.

Interesting news from Unit 4 about the new registration “dashboard”

From Stephanie Stuart about the new registration “dashboard“:

http://www.champaignschools.org/news/news_view.php?action=view&news_type=press_release&id_news=747

 

Statement Regarding Online Kindergarten Registration Dashboard
March 7, 2013

This year, Champaign Schools made it a priority to improve transparency around our Schools of Controlled Choice system for kindergarten registration. As part of this effort, we launched a parent dashboard as part of our online registration system, which allows parents to track specific information on the number of applicants to each elementary school. While are excited to offer this new feature, we’re aware that many parents have experienced errors when registering online and have found it difficult to access the dashboard after submitting their application.

We are very concerned about these issues and are working with our technical team to resolve them. We are also working with our team to provide a stand-alone parent dashboard so that this information is more easily accessible on our website. We anticipate these issues will be resolved and live on our website by Tuesday, March 12, 2013.

We are also offering daily technical support for the online registration and choice application system from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. Central Time Zone. If you experience an error with the on-line system please email support@enrolledu.us.

In addition to visiting or calling our Family Information Center (1103 N. Neil Street in Champaign, 351-3701) you may also contact any of the following District employees who are happy to assist with your questions and concerns:

For More Information, Contact:
Stephanie Stuart, Community Relations Coordinator
stuartst@champaignschools.org
(217) 351-3822

 

I have an outstanding question to Dr. Wiegand and Tom Lockman (as of March 3rd):

“I am curious, we have contracted to pay $92,000 to Dr. Alves’ company, but in the contract he also specified that he would work on an hourly basis as needed (just like his previous contract). I believe he listed $100/hour and another rate ($62/hour?) for his colleagues. Is the work that Dr. Alves is doing this weekend and ongoing to fix the problems of the initial software deployment part of the $92,000, or are we now above and beyond that amount?”

 

 

Brand-new registration website is now live, with working* version of EduLog interface

Going to make this quick.

http://choice.champaignschools.org/

This is the new website for Unit 4 registration. It is also referred to as the “dashboard”; I have not yet read up on it too much, but one would infer that one can “manage” one’s school choice from such an interface.

I am quickly going through the registration process and am noticing several things. First, there is extremely little data checking; I am entering bogus data for most fields and the web interface assumes they are all good. The one field that has been checked so far is the birthdate, so at least a very minimal amount of checking is happening. Of most interest to me was the EduLog interface, which you can find on the fourth screen after you have successfully entered your birthdate and address (you get an error message if either one is whacky, I found out).

Big caveat!! The software interface is not working well. My child, A A (yes, that is the name I gave my fictional child, very easy to type) has a proximity to Barkstall. Proximity B at that. And yet Carrie Busey is a 10 minute walk and I already have one child there as a Proximity A student. So… be warned, there are bugs. Wow, Carrie Busey doesn’t even show up on my list…..

Overall, the registration site looks and feels very much like Dr. Alves’ previous incarnations. That lack of data checking really worries me a lot. We paid over $100k for this? Yuck. And it was late. And we didn’t beta test it. Yuck.

*working means that it does accept an address and tell you how far they think you live from each school.

 

UPDATE: as of 8:36pm, March 1st, it looks like the Carrie Busey problem has been resolved. Go forth and find new problems.

Registration 2013

A visitor to this blogged asked about the 2012 school assignment data, so I cleaned it up and got most of it working. I also responded to someone on Chambanamoms.com who just asked about registration. To top it off, Unit 4 put out there annual schedule of Choice Community Forums:

• Thursday, January 24, 2013 6:00 p.m. Stratton Elementary – 902 N. Randolph Street – Champaign
• Tuesday, February 5, 2013 6:00 p.m. Carrie Busey Elementary – 304 Prairie Rose Lane – Savoy
• Tuesday, February 19, 2013 6:00 p.m. Temple Baptist Church – 1100 Broadmoor Drive – Champaign

Here are the visualizations I did of the “overchosen” schools, or basically, which schools folks selected for which choices (you get a grand total of 5 choices):

The one the left is from 2011, the one in the center is 2012. A quick glance shows a very common trend (which has persisted for the past 4 years that I have been collecting data), with a very minor “flattening” effect in 2012 (just slightly more diversification). One interesting thing that popped up in 2012 is that Carrie Busey jumped up two spots while Barkstall dropped 3. I also added an “adjusted” graph to the right which shows how the magnet registration (done in February, prior to the March 2012 registration) affected the popularity of the schools. As you can see, the magnet registration pretty much filled up each of the three magnet schools (Garden Hills, Stratton and BTW aka Washington).

On November 7th (and December 7th and January 4th) I followed up with the district administration and the Board about Dr. Susan Zola’s proposed Choice recommendations. I am still waiting to hear back. I reiterated the need to go back to the four local software companies I identified last year in an effort to completely rework the Choice RFP. While this is a big deal to me, I am wondering if anyone else even cares.

Registration: What’s the big deal (part 3)

Continuing from previous posts (1 & 2).

Just to reiterate, the title of this series is not meant to condescend at all. Rather, it is a look from the ground-up about this mystifying registration process. And actually, I could almost conclude this post with the simple statement that Registration has become overly complex for no good reason.

What if

New School Assignment video is up on registration website

Here is the URL:

http://fast.wistia.com/embed/iframe/57f6eaeb23?videoWidth=630&videoHeight=354&volumeControl=true&playerColor=3853a4&autoPlay=true&endVideoBehavior=reset&popover=true

 

You can get there from the new registration website:

http://www.unit4registration.org/

 

They did a really swell job with the video – very impressive! I wish they spent a little more time explaining why the one parent did not get any of her 5 choices since that kinda sticks out like a sore thumb, but there is the implication that the parent finally get in via the waitlist. Proximity is described in much better detail, which helps. I still wait to see an online map and real-life examples.

 

Trevor Nadrozny has short outtakes in many of the sections (the “process flow” from the website), and does a lot of the explaining in the longer video. The repetition of the three R’s does indeed drive home the point of what one does, and I appreciate that Trevor acknowledges the pain points.

 

I am pleased that Unit 4 found someone to do such a snazzy video on such short notice. I hope they look to supplement the video and website with even better stuff for next year.

New Registration website is LIVE!

http://unit4registration.org/

 

And it ain’t that shabby. I am reading through it now to see how palatable it is. Feel free to leave comments.

This is how San Francisco does it

Earlier I mentioned how Wake County does “Schools of Choice”.

I got a better one now. I sent this off to the Board, the FIC and Wiegand this morning:

I came across yet another school district (San Francisco) that does a most excellent job of explaining the registration process. They pretty much describe exactly what we do without using the words “choice” or “proximity”. They also have an online school selector that tells you which school is in which area and allows you to choose various features.

• San Fran’s school district registration page: http://www.sfusd.edu/en/enroll-in-sfusd-schools/enroll-for-next-year/overview/discover-your-school-options.html
• Online slide presentation of school selection: http://portal.sliderocket.com/BBXXX/Discovery_Presentation_for-12_13_-v_5_0
• Online school selector: http://www.sfusd.edu/en/enroll-in-sfusd-schools/interactive-school-selector.html

Large Kindergarten class sizes for 2010-2011 (and beyond)

Back in August, WCIA ran a story about the increased Kindergarten enrollment. It did not occur to me at the time what the ramifications of that were. Recently, I have been chatting with some current Kindergarten parents; apparently, they were informed as early as August 5th about the need to shuffle and squeeze in yet more students, bringing the totals up to 25 at 10 of the 11 schools and 24 at the 11th. 25 kids for one teacher is a lot. It is a lot when you only plan for 20 or 21. It is a lot when you have several kids that require a little more attention. The district responded by stating that they would add an extra teacher’s aide to each elementary school. Throughout the past semester, the aides were released at the end of the quarter (both quarters) and were only taken back on a couple weeks later. Also, this is one teacher’s aide per school;  a three-strand school would have to share the aide among three different classes.

 

It is not exactly clear what is going to happen this semester. I know that at Carrie Busey, several parents have stepped up to the plate and have been helping out in the classrooms. Parents have also been in contact with Administration and they seem to have a favorable impression of Trevor Nadrozny, who is trying hard to find solutions and also keep a line of communication open with parents. When I emailed Judy Wiegand with these concerns she replied (and gave me permission to quote):

We have been holding discussions around this issue and plan on adding a Kindergarten and first grade class for 2012-13 to address class size.  We are discussing location of the additional classrooms at the Leadership meeting tomorrow [Jan 5th] and once the BOE has been notified we will certainly work with Lynn to publicize it.  Our timeline is to have decisions made prior to Choice forums so parents are aware.

 

Yet this does not exactly spell out what will happen for Spring 2012. It is awesome to see parents getting involved, and I hope that trend continues. It is awesome to see folks in Administration taking parents seriously and responding appropriately. And I am ever thankful for our teachers – I have not heard a peep of complaint from them at all!

 

Another little interesting tidbit to come out of this centers around Registration itself. I have more to say about registration (imagine that!), but the purposes of this post, I was given a story of how one parent was not even aware of the need to register in March. Apparently, in 2011 there were a significant number of parents registering in August, and some of those allegedly already had children in school. So whatever Unit 4 did in early 2011 did not reach some parents. For whatever reason. Are there other ways in which Unit 4 can communicate with the community? Put up brochures in libraries/churches? More exposure on TV/radio?

Enrollment Projection System

Pretend you are now the English scientist known simply as “Time Traveller”. You sit down in a contraption you have called the “Time Machine”, you dial back to 1986 and hit the big green button.

The Apple IIe has been out for 3 years now, and the Enhanced IIe was released early last year. The Mac Plus came out at the beginning of this year. The IBM XT 286 is fresh on the market, and Intel recently announced that the 386 will be available soon. Zelda and Mario Bros are rocking it with the brand new Nintendo Entertainment System.

During this time, a team of Ph. D profs and software developers worked with Dr. Dwayne Gardner and Dr. Arthur Wohlers to produce the “Enrollment Projection System”. The idea behind this new-fangled piece of software was to use trend lines based on inputted data to forecast (project) future enrollment patterns. They wrote it so was rather user-friendly, and could be run on either the IBM PC or the Apple IIe. I am guessing it was written in BASIC.

Ok, you can wake up now. It is 2011. 25 years later. Dr. Wohlers passed away in 2008. Seneca Software, Inc, was merged into Courthouse Technologies and filed away on a now dusty shelf. Dr. Gardner was, somewhat recently, leading the Planning Advocates group, which has been defunct for a little while now. To this day, Unit 4 is using this piece of software to project how many students will be registering for school next year. I would be very curious how “user-friendly” the Unit 4 staff consider this antique piece of code. They probably have an old XT sitting around for the sole purpose of running this dinosaur.

The User Manual is actually a rather insightful document, although it is a little hard on the eyes. I tried to convert it to a Word friendly document, but with mixed results (not posted). I find it extremely telling that the Demographic Survey we paid handsomely for is within 1% accuracy of this dated, but apparently useful tool.

I have this idea of migrating this to the 20th century. Maybe rewrite it in java and put a gui on it. I have also been exploring ArcGIS tools, and with the Census information available, I am thinking we could even automate the projections based on publicly available data feeds. Don’t need a high-priced outfit to tell you how your population has and will change.

But, given our current directions, this ain’t gonna be happening any time soon. I’ll just keep dreaming for now. And reminiscing about Combat on the Atari 2600……

Registration: What’s the big deal (part 2)

As I was preparing another post on this topic, I heard two stories of new families who will be going through the registration process (aka, “Schools of Choice”, “Kindergarten Lottery”, et al) soon and have almost no idea of what is going on. In both cases, these two families speak English as a second language and are (or at least were) not yet fully aware of online blogs or even the Unit 4 Family Information Center – they have only recently learned of this thing called a lottery and they have to somehow register their child. If I had to put myself in their shoes, I would probably be blissfully ignorant until I arrived at the FIC to fill out a registration form, and then my heart would sink as I was presented with 11 schools to choose from and confusing terms like “Proximity A” and “Magnet programs”.

How would Unit 4, and particularly the FIC, best serve families in this situation? I am not even sure how to answer that question.

One thing that might be really helpful is a large posterboard (at least 3 feet by 4 feet, preferably larger) of a map of the school district with all the schools clearly marked and pushpins so that a parent can find their address and see approximately how far they are from any given school. That was the impetus of my googlemap/javascript project. If you know nothing about the schools, at least you can make a determination by the schools that are closest to you. And since you get 5 “choices” this year (opposed to 3 “choices” in years past), there is an exceptionally high chance that you get at least one of them. Even if it is your last choice.

I would also love to see a directory of “walking miles” from each and every address to each and every school. Yes, that is quite a lot of information to print and consume; roughly 45,000 addresses x 11 schools = 495000 possibilities. But that information is very static – only has to be updated when a school changes location. You could even cheat a little bit and introduce some error by calculating at the block level; an average of 25 addresses per block would give you a mere 1800 entries to comb through. I am told that the bus garage already has something like this, but I am met with a Stonewall Jackson every time I ask for it. Sure, Unit 4 does not want to put personally identifiable information online, but how hard is it to strip out names and leave simple addresses? The beauty of doing all addresses indiscrimantly is that it totally ignores whether or not a child is in school – viola, no way to personally identify anyone.

Sorry, I totally digressed on this topic. I spoke with an acquaintance about Unit 4; this person has a lot of experience with communication, and basically summed up the Unit 4 Administration of being guilty of misinformation by omission. They basically have a really hard time getting helpful information out to the public. I can only hope that changes. And I will do what I can to encourage it.

In Conclusion: When you register for Kindergarten in Unit 4, you have an opportunity to rank-order your top 5 choices for a school.

1. Use all 5 choices.
2. If you can, do some research prior to filling out the form to get an idea where you want your child to go
3. If you cannot, find the schools that are closest to you
4. Do not leave any choice blank.

Registration: What’s the big deal? (Part 1 of some)

Parent’s are starting to ask about Unit 4 Registration, especially those new to the system and/or looking at the Kindergarten Lottery. In the spirit of spicing things up, Unit 4 has now introduced an additional Lottery for two schools, Gardens Hills and Washington, featuring their magnet programs. Jodi Heckel put out a good article in yesterdays NG (http://www.news-gazette.com/news/education/2011-01-16/champaign-wants-spur-interest-magnet-programs.html); she spells out a little about what is going on and quotes Dr. Michael Alves. Couple of interesting things going on here – I could easily make this topic really long, but to make it bite-size, I am breaking it up into chunks. I do not know how many chunks I need.

First off, you will be very hard pressed to find any information about the Magnet programs on the school district’s website. That in itself is a bit odd and even disappointing. It appears that Unit 4 is leaning heavily on Jodi Heckel to “spread the word” for them. Lynn Peisker is getting warmed up with the Key Communicator mailings and has sent out a few items (ie, a Jan 10th notice about meetings), but I long to see more information “from the horse’s mouth”, if you know what I mean.

Next, read Heckel’s article thoroughly – there is a lot of good information in there. Unit 4 will be making a big push to advertise the two magnet programs. And with good reason. Like Dr. Alves points out, Garden Hills and Washington are not “overchosen”. What does that mean, and why is it significant? Typically, schools that have higher AYP (Academic Yearly Progress) ratings like Bottenfield, Barkstall and Robeson have many fewer seats than parents choosing them, meaning that a lot of parents do not get in. How many is a lot? Last year, Bottenfield was chosen 318 times (a mixture of first, second and third choices), but it only had 69 seats available. That is a lot. Garden Hills has 77 seats (not including the ESL program), but only 64 parents chose it. So the big push is basically to get more parents to choose Garden Hills and Washington. In that vein, I found an interesting Promo video (not specific to the Magnet program, that I can tell – the Garden Hills Magnet theme is “Primary Years Programme”, not sure where the UK spelling came from):

http://www.champaignschools.org/schools/news/view.php?id=14&news=470

In my opinion, it is a good thing that Unit 4 is trying to bolster the underdog schools. This is something that should have happened 5 years ago, though. As Mr. Culver states in the opening scene of the video, I also believe that all the schools within Unit 4 are really good. If you are skeptical (and keep in mind a dose of skepticism is quite healthy), just talk to the parents and the teachers and what you might subjectively call the “worst” schools. As it stands, Unit 4 is going through a laborious, stretched-out wind-up and delivering a pitch for a lottery that opens in 9 days (Jan 26th). I will grant that much, if not all, of the information here can be found in the Board Minutes, if one is so inclined to comb through them. Or read all of them. Apparently, the Minutes are not accessible to search crawlers, unfortunately.

But my goal is not to poke holes in Unit 4; rather, I want to help fill in the gaps. If there is a unfilled gap, please let me know! *grin*

From what I can tell, Washington’s magnet program will focus on “Science, Technology, Engineering and Math”, while Garden Hills will focus on “International Education” (NG 2011, NG 2009). I am going to try looking for some documentation that spells this out – for instance, what in the world is international education (tongue in cheek)? If you find that you want to attend either one of these fine schools, there will be a special “lottery” held in February (well, starting in late January). This is not the same as the “normal” Kindergarten Lottery held in March. The unspoken expectation is that there will still be seats in both schools at the beginning of March. If it so happens that both schools fill up (which would actually be a very pleasant surprise), parents are still eligible and encouraged to participate in the March lottery. The Magnet lottery is not weighted at all, from what I have learned so far. It seems “first come, first served”. I hope this will be spelled out in greater detail in the next 9 days, but I have already been told that no registration forms will be sent to Dr. Alves for the Magnet lottery. I suppose that if you get into one of these schools, it is technically possible to then turn around and enter into the March lottery if you really want to, just for grins and all. Please note, I do not recommend this course of action. I am merely speculating.

In the past, parents were told to choose three (3) schools as their top three choices. This year, parents are supposed to get five (5) choices. This will probably reduce the number of “unassigned” households down to zero. That is a small accomplishment. You have eleven (11) schools to choose from. Some of them have special programs (ESL, BL, Magnet, etc). If you choose schools based on their AYP ranking, know that there is a fair chance you will not make it into the first three (but maybe you will *grin*). A big variable this year is Carrie Busey, since it is moving in 2012. If you live near a school that is not Barkstall, Bottenfield, Robeson, Westview or South Side, the chances of getting into it are exceptionally high. If you want to get into one of the schools I mentioned, please mark it as one of your choices but please understand there is a chance you will not receive it – it simply comes down to numbers. Remember, all the schools in Unit 4 are rather good; they all have pluses and minuses.

This is probably a good place to conclude Chunk #1. I have had the occasion to read “How We Decide”. The author makes a distinction between informed decisions and gut feelings, between the logical and the not-so-logical regions of our brain – neither one is always perfect, and beware of falling into the trap of too much information. I realize that as I research and help expose what is going on, there is a danger I am really making it more difficult for the others. For this reason alone, I highly encourage you to ask questions! Call up the FIC, the Mellon Center, leave a comment here, or just call another parent in Unit 4. School registration should be the least of your worries.