By: Lory Pilchik, SchoolMint CMO
Is your public charter school managing enrollment manually and struggling with paper forms? If your team has considered automating your enrollment processes, including application and lottery management, you’ll want to check out SchoolMint, a long-time Texas Charter Schools Association (TCSA) Solution Provider.
SchoolMint is a cloud-based student enrollment and school choice platform helping schools streamline student registration and re-enrollment, application and lottery management, communications and payments, digital forms, and document uploads. SchoolMint serves more than 3,000 schools worldwide and works with various leading public charter schools in Texas including YES Prep, IDEA Public Schools, Life School, Southwest Preparatory, and KIPP San Antonio and KIPP Dallas-Fort Worth, among others.
In fall 2015, KIPP DFW was seeking an automated application and lottery system to scale with the charter network’s growth goal of enrolling 5,000 students by 2020. Their previous paper-based system was labor intensive. Staff members were spending up to 25 percent of their time managing the application process and continually placing calls to families to track down the status and clarity of applications. “The staff was drowning and we knew we had to improve our internal process,” said Cara Eng, the director of regional operations at KIPP DFW. “We needed an efficient system that would help free up staff time, more easily manage and report on student data, and better communicate with parents.
For KIPP DFW, SchoolMint was a game changer. SchoolMint’s online system allowed KIPP DFW to easily manage the application and lottery process with accuracy and integrity. SchoolMint eliminated the need to manually clean up application data, which previously took weeks to complete, and provided staff with tools to easily control that data, generate robust reports, and electronically communicate to families about their child’s application status. “On top of being cost-efficient, SchoolMint is very user-friendly for our staff, as well as our parents,” said Eng. “It also allows us to view and analyze student data and make the best recommendations to families - a huge plus for us as we continue to grow our footprint.”
In addition to streamlining enrollment processes such as application, registration, and lottery management, SchoolMint’s seamless data integration with student information systems allows schools to send critical student information into their SIS seamlessly. SchoolMint is available both on web and mobile, ensuring all families can succeed in sending in and accessing critical information. Finally, its user friendly design and availability in multiple languages, transforms the end-to-end enrollment experience for staff and parents.
Interested in learning more? Join our upcoming webinar on ‘Recruiting a Diverse Student Body’ on Thursday, September 22 at 2 p.m. CT. Join Summit Public Schools and Blackstone Valley Prep for a conversation focused on how and why these leading charter schools uphold diversity as a core value and how it influences student recruiting strategies. Register here.
If you are interested in a personalized product demo, contact SchoolMint at info@schoolmint.com. If you will be at the TCSA Conference, make sure to drop by Booth 43!
