Northern California District Moves to Online Lottery System for Student Transfers
The San
Mateo-Foster City School District in Foster City, CA
is automating the lottery system it uses to assign transfer students
within the
district.
For more than 15 years, the district with 12,000
students in
20 schools has used a labor-intensive paper-based lottery system to
determine
which of the 1,000 students who request transfers each year would be
able to do
so.
This year, it will begin using an online system
designed and
deployed by InfoSnap,
a cloud-based registration management system provider, instead.
District Enrollment and Communications Coordinator Amber Farinha said
that, not
only will the streamlined lottery process save "countless hours of
hand-entering applications," it will give school staff
members a way to better
manage school waiting lists online. It will also allow more efficient
communication with families via e-mail and mailed notifications.
"We've done the math and InfoSnap will save us
thousands of
dollars just in manpower alone," she said.
Since the San Mateo-Foster City School District has a
large
Spanish-speaking population, InfoSnap's online lottery process also
provides
multilingual localization so that transfer request forms can be filled
out in
Spanish as well.
"We were looking for an online-based lottery solution
that
would make it easier for families to apply for a transfer," Farinha
said. "This
is an investment for our district that will provide a clear and concise
lottery
process."
About the Author
Michael Hart is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer and the former executive editor of THE Journal.