1) The Academy’s targeted first year enrollment is 130 students. Enrolling no fewer than this number for the entire first year is essential in order to meet current revenue projections. Given the inevitability of attrition (many students who enroll, also enroll at other schools and will drop out because of transportation or other problems) both during the months prior to opening and also in the first few weeks of school, we recommend registering a substantial number by late February 2008. Once 130 students have been secured, we will secure a waiting list of at least 40-60 more students.
2) Lionsgate Academy will abide by the following Minnesota Charter Law:
MN Charter Law Admission Requirements (MN Statutes 2007, 124D.10 Subd. 9)
A charter school may limit admission to:
Subd. 9. Admission requirements. A charter school may limit admission to:
(1) pupils within an age group or grade level;
(2) people who are eligible to participate in the graduation incentives program under section
124D.68; or
(3) residents of a specific geographic area where the percentage of the population of
non-Caucasian people of that area is greater than the percentage of the non-Caucasian population
in the congressional district in which the geographic area is located, and as long as the school
reflects the racial and ethnic diversity of the specific area.
A charter school shall enroll an eligible pupil who submits a timely application, unless the
number of applications exceeds the capacity of a program, class, grade level, or building. In this
case, pupils must be accepted by lot. If a charter school is the only school located in a town
serving pupils within a particular grade level, then pupils that are residents of the town must be
given preference for enrollment before accepting pupils by lot. If a pupil lives within two miles of a charter school and the next closest public school is more than five miles away, the charter school must give those pupils preference for enrollment before accepting other pupils by lot.
A charter school shall give preference for enrollment to a sibling of an enrolled pupil and to
a foster child of that pupil’s parents before accepting other pupils by lot.
A charter school may not limit admission to pupils on the basis of intellectual ability,
measures of achievement or aptitude, or athletic ability.
ENROLLMENT POLICY
Lionsgate Academy will recruit students in a manner that ensures equal access to the school and does not discriminate against students of a particular race, color, national origin, religion, or sex, or against students with disabilities. Furthermore, Lionsgate Academy’s Enrollment Policy, as defined below, is designed to: 1. Meet the requirements of all Minnesota and federal statutes; 2. Ensure equal access to the school, particularly for students with special needs; and, 3. Serve at-risk (defined as those eligible for free and reduced lunch) as well as all other students.
In compliance with the suggested policy from the Minnesota Department of Education, Lionsgate will only ask for the name, grade level and contact information from the initial application. They will ask for more information only after the student has been formally admitted.
If more than the any year’s enrollment capacity is reached through applications to enroll for any grade, a lottery, by grade, will be held to prioritize the waiting list. Sibling preference will be given in enrollment.
The lottery will be held in the March 2008 for the start-up year and on (to be determined) in ensuing years.
Each year the public will be informed of the opportunity to enroll in Lionsgate Academy and of the lottery by placing a newspaper ad in the local newspapers, and by other means of advertisement (posters, flyers, brochures, etc.). Additionally, during the start-up year, the following methods are also being used (but not limited to these) to advertise the enrollment opportunity:
Notices/posters/brochures sent to organizations, schools, and individuals who will be interested in Lionsgate-particularly those who deal with autism
Presentations at local organizations, and community groups
Press releases for area media
A mailing campaign to targeted current interest list from the survey using the Lionsgate Academy brochure. This includes developing a brochure copy and design, using a mailing house for names and postage/inserts, developing an insert for open houses, printing, etc. These activities require significant time.
Word-of-mouth through active parents and their networks
Possible phone campaign to lists obtained through organizations who work with students with autism
This policy will be submitted to the Lionsgate Academy Board for review and comment, and we will incorporate any recommended changes.
Enrollment Plan
The Lionsgate Academy Enrollment Plan consists of a number of activities:
Student Recruitment and Enrollment – A plan for holding an informational meeting and enrollment sign-up for interested parents and students.
Confirming the applications – Each of the parents that sign an Application will be phoned to ensure they are still interested in Lionsgate Academy and want to be included in the lottery (if a class is full).
Develop a plan for recruiting additional students – This is a discussion of how the Lionsgate Academy opportunity, and specifically the lottery, will be advertised to the public.
Devise a Method of Tracking Applications and Create a Database to Store Enrollment Information – This is a discussion of the necessary data collection and storage procedures so that integrity and accountability can be maintained throughout the process.
Develop a Lottery Process – The method of performing the lottery is defined in this section as well as notification to accepted families.
Enrollment Plan Action Items – This defines the additional steps necessary to implement this Enrollment Plan. (See week-by-week task plan.)
Student Recruitment and Enrollment
The Lionsgate Academy Open Enrollment period begins on February 1, 2008 and will end on February 29, 2008. If certain classes are filled beyond capacity, at that point in time, a lottery will be held to prioritize students for admission. If they are not filled to capacity, students will be admitted for each class and students that apply after the end of the enrollment period will be admitted on a first come, first serve basis. Between now and the start of the enrollment, Lionsgate Academy will publicize the school as much as possible within its limited budget and resources. Publicizing the enrollment opportunity will focus on an invitation to the public to attend informational meetings and enrollment sign-ups. These will include Lionsgate Academy representatives providing information to the public as well as an opportunity, on-site, for parents to complete applications to enroll their students.
Each parent who has already filled out an application will be called to confirm interest. If a parent indicates he/she does want to remain in the lottery, the student(s) will be included. If a parent indicates a change of heart, then the Application will be set aside and the student(s) not included in the lottery.
A script will be prepared for callers to use when talking to parents.
The script for making these telephone calls will be an adaptation of the following:
“Hello. My name is ______________ and I am calling on behalf of Lionsgate Academy, the exciting new charter school opening this summer.
In (obtain the month the Application was signed from the completed form), you completed an Application to enroll (names of children listed on form) in the school. I am calling today to confirm you are still interested in sending your children. We are thrilled about the opportunity this school will offer your student! Are you still planning on sending (names of students from form)?”
If the parent says yes, then explain the lottery process:
We are required to hold a lottery for enrollment in the school. This means that, if we get more than Applications to enroll for any one grade than space available, we have to randomly select the students that will be able to attend the school for that grade. This ensures all interested students and parents have an equal chance of gaining entry to the school.
We are going to hold the lottery in early March 2008. At that point, we will call or send a notice to your home letting you know if your student is/are enrolled. If they are not part of those selected, we will let you know what number they have on the waiting list. If one of your children gets into the school, all of your children will get in.
The goal of this explanation is to make sure that the parent understands that filling out an enrollment form is still not a guarantee of enrollment.
Be prepared to answer any questions related to the school.
Once the call has been made:
Record the date and time that contact was made in the lower right hand corner.
Place your initials underneath the date and time.
Note on the form whether the parent is a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No’.
If a ‘Yes’, place the form in the lottery stack for entry into the lottery database.
If a ‘No’, place the form in a separate stack and retain in a file.
Develop a Lottery Process
The process for running the lottery is as follows:
1. Enter confirmed Applications into a database by grade, assigning each student within a particular grade a number. If a student has siblings, that fact needs to be noted within the database in order to give siblings preference.
2. Run a random number generator, or use any other manual system, using the number of students within a particular grade. Save the order of the numbers.
3. Place the random number generator designator in the database. The first students in each grade are considered “enrolled”. The remaining students are on the wait list and will retain their number for the remainder of the lottery year (until of the following year).
4. Search the database for any siblings of the student. Siblings are considered enrolled and should be labeled as such and removed from the lottery.
5. Re-do steps 1 through 2 for each grade.
6. Applications to enroll received after (to be determined)of the start-up year and before (to be determined) of ensuing year will be added to the Waiting List in the order received.
Devise a Method of Tracking Applications
Applications will be tracked via a database program like Microsoft Access. This database will form the basis for the school’s Waiting List. All of the information from each Application will be stored within the program. Existing Applications will be entered initially. Once the confirmation phone call is made to parents on existing letters, any who wish to drop out of the lottery, will be eliminated from the Waiting List Database. Applications collected on the day of the presentation/sign-up will be entered into the database during the following three days.
Hopefully, the database program selected will have a random number feature that will assist with running the lottery. If not, an on-line random number generator will be used or names will literally be pulled out of a hat.
Create a Database to Store Waiting List Information
The input to the Database will be the Lionsgate Academy Application to Enroll. Each element on the Application needs to be captured in the database. Special considerations include:
1. Children belonging to one family need to be linked somehow so that the sibling preference portion of the lottery can be invoked. (Siblings have preference and need to be moved to either the ‘enrolled’ position or to the first spot(s) on the waiting list.)
2. There needs to be a way of counting the number of students signed up for each grade because we only need to run a lottery for that grade if more than the allotted number of students (plus several more than desired class size considering the attrition factor), are signed up.
3. Once the lottery is run and each student has a lottery-assigned waiting list number, there needs to be a field on the database to store that number.
All of these considerations are noted in the “Develop a Lottery Process” section above.
Outputs needed from this database will include:
1. A list of the “enrolled” students by grade level.
2. A list of the remaining students in wait list order by grade level.
3. Mailing labels for all students in the database (to send notification of enrolled/wait list and wait list #).
4. Of the enrolled students, we will need to produce the following statistics by grade and in total (this information will be gathered after the student is admitted):
a. Number from various school districts.
b. Number of free and reduced lunch students.
c. Number of special needs students (requiring IEPs, etc.)
d. Number of ELL students including the language.
e. Number of students from each type of school (private, public, home schooling, etc.) and, for those attending public school, the number at each individual school.
f. Number of students needing school transportation
ADOPTED BY THE BOARD ON: December 11th, 2007
REVISED BY THE BOARD ON:
