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Overview:
(newly added info is marked with )
The process - See More sections below are in order
- ParentVUE - Parent applies
- Lottery Application Screens - School office staff verifies, approves or denies applicants
- Lottery Engine Screens - Process to tumble approved applicants randomly, or based on factors such as grade or other conditions as defined by the school. Creates Offered and Waitlisted students.
Applications will be in one of these status throughout the process:
Lottery Application Queue Screen is used during the application process to identify which students will move forward TOthe lottery
- 1 = Pending - App is in the Queue waiting to be Approved or Denied
- 2 = Approved - App is in the Queue and Approved to move to Lottery Engine
- 3 = Denied - App is in the Queue and Denied to move to Lottery Engine
- 8 = Rejected - This status occurs when there is a condition to automatically reject an application (ex. At CTHS, if a current student applies the app will be rejected since they don't need to apply)
Lottery Applications Screen shows all possible status and is the screen you will use once the application period closes and you are ready to run the lottery
- 4 = Offered - App has run through Lottery Engine and student will be offered placement
- 5 = Waitlist - App has run through Lottery Engine and student is waitlisted. They may gain placement in future lottery runs, if slots open.
- 9 = Cancelled
ParentVUE
- 6 = Offer Accepted - Parent has accepted student placement.
- 7 = Offer Declined - Parent has declined student placement OR waitlist.
General Tips
Filtering in Synergy.
SIMPLIFYING THE GRID LAYOUT: Using the three dots at the top right of the grid, you can filter the grid columns to show only the flags you are verifying. This makes it visually easier.
FILTERING GRID RESULTS: You can also filter by the grid headers to get a specific group of students. Ex. 9th Grade Students, SE Student Flag, etc.
Below you see the grid colums filtered for only the SE flags and the headers filtered for applications with SE Student checked. You can see what needs verified easily.
ParentVUE
Parent will fill out the Online Registration (OLR) for desired Lottery and submit via ParentVUE.
NOTE: You must do the boundary exempt lottery application before OLR if you are registering at a non-boundary school.
- Parent will sign in and open Online Registration.
- Select the Online Registration to complete.
- Answer all questions and submit the Online Registration.
- Once submitted the parent can monitor the process in the Status screen.
- After the lottery run date parents can navigate to Online Registration to see status. Possible status:
- if the student is offered placement you will be required to 'Accept' or 'Decline' the placement within a timeframe. Schools will communicate this timeframe.
- if the student is 'Waitlisted' you will see WAITLISTED in the Status screen. If you choose to Decline you will have that option at this time.
- At this point expect more communication from the school regarding next steps.
Other Lottery Screens
Student Lottery, Lottery Runs and Lottery Outcome Screens.
Student Lottery - See all lottery information regarding a student.
Lottery Runs and Lottery Outcome screen - These screens show the outcome of Lottery Runs. You can export any of the grids.
Lottery Engine - IT Use
This is the process to actually fill seats and create waitlists.
Lottery Engine Screen - Contact IT before you run this for assistance.
This is a powerful screen and publishing results will notify parents.
- All applications must be accepted or rejected in the Lottery Queue before you run the Lottery.
- Be sure you are focused to the year the lottery is built for.
- Use the arrows to find the desired Lottery.
- Select Application statuses to include in the run.
- Generally you will run Approved until you are satisfied with the run results and are ready to Publish Results.
- Publishing Results finalizes the list of Offered and Waitlisted and publishes results to ParentVUE.
- You may choose to 'Publish the Results' before or after you run the process.
- After a period of time you've identified for parents to Accept or Decline placement you can run the lottery again to fill slots opened by parent denials or Limit changes.
- Subsequent runs you will likely run for Waitlisted students to fill those slots.
- Check the Lottery Definition to Run.
- Click Run Once button to run the process. Interval/Scheduled Runs are available (we don't use this at the moment)
Publish Results on the Lottery Engine Screen - Once you are satisfied with the run results you can publish. This will result in:
- Placement Offer and Waitlist of applications.
- Publishing of results to ParentVUE - see screenshots of what parents see in the ParentVUE section above.
- You will no longer see these applications on the Lottery Application Queue. You can see them on Lottery Outcome or on Lottery Applications.
After Parent Acceptance - Registration Queue
When parents accept an offer an application is complete and the student moves to the Registration Queue. This will also auto cancel any other lottery applications the student has pending.
Process these registrations like you would an OLR enrollment registration.
- Review if necesary, then Click Find.
- Look for duplicate students, add Enter Code and FTE, then click Accept.
- Accept Options screen may appear. In this case the lottery is for Next Year and the student already has a next year enrollment record that needs dropped. If the lottery is for the current year you may need to drop their current enrollment to enroll at your school. Complete the screen as needed.
- This process only creates an enrollment record for the student. The parent will still need to complete an OLR form to attend the new school when registration opens.
Parent Notification, Comments on ParentVUE & Emailing Tips
1. Notify parents from the actions dropdown 2. Add a comment that will show up on ParentVUE. 3. Email using Blackboard by exporting Student ID from the grid.
1. Parent Notifications from Actions dropdown
- On Lottery Application Queue and Lottery Applications screens
NOTE: We recommend sending the notification before you Approve/Deny. If you are filtered to pending, the student will disappear on approval so you'll need to re-filter to find it tosend the notification.
- Using Actions choose Notify.
- Then choose the appropriate Notification Email Content (Approved, Denied, Offered). Add Office Comment here if needed.
- Parent will get these emails
2. Add a comment that will show up on ParentVUE.
- Open details and Comment to Parent.
- The comment will show up on in the Status screen on ParentVUE. Currently no notification is sent when a comment is added.
3. Emailing Applicants via Blackboard
- EMAILING CURRENT STUDENTS: You can filter to get the student IDs to send a Blackboard message.
- You only need the Student ID column. You will also want to filter to exclude blanks so the file will only be current students
- 1. Confirm the Student ID column is showing on the grid.
- 2. Click on the three grid dots and 3. choose Export Excel.
- Open the GridExport.xlsx file. You can delete all columns except the Student ID. If you have a blank row for Student ID you can delete that as well.
- Save file as a .txt file.
- Use the KB ‘Blackboard Import a text file with contacts’ to send a Blackboard message to those students. Go to the 'Using a File with ID in Blackboard' section for quick instructions.
- You will need someone with district access to send the email, as the students will not be enrolled at your school.
- Save the file to use for future emails.
- EMAILING NON-MSBSD STUDENTS:
- You will need to get the email from the application itself, as these students are not in Blackboard.
- We suggest that when you initially review a new student application you copy their email address and put in the records comments. That way you can get to it easily if you need to email later.