District scrambles to register students
BESD online registration presents challenge
BRAWLEY — Brawley Elementary School District officials on Monday scrambled to find classrooms for hundreds of children who weren’t enrolled in advance through the district’s new online registration system.
This school year marks the first time that BESD implemented the online registration system, which appeared to have contributed to the large volume of issues and parents’ frustration on Monday.
“If people didn’t get into the school in their neighborhood, it was mostly because they didn’t complete the online registration process,” said BESD Superintendent Richard Rundhaug.
Although parents did have the option of submitting paper registration forms by the noon Friday deadline, the district had made a concerted effort to steer parents toward the online system, Rundhaug said.
Aside from sending parents an electronic and physical notice announcing the transition to online registration, the district had also recently hosted workshops to help parents set up online accounts and register their children.
As required by law, parents had to submit proof of residency in order to register online. Rundhaug said the vast majority of parents whose children were not registered as of Monday morning had failed to submit that proof, typically a utility bill.
“Very often that seems to be the biggest stumbling block,” Rundhaug said referring to the proof of residency. “For whatever reason, a lot of people find that challenging.”
The district has about 4,000 students attending the four elementary schools and one junior high within its boundaries.
The vast majority were able to get into the school that they were assigned to, Rundhaug said.
An estimated 300 students reportedly were not properly registered in time, prompting long lines of frustrated parents at most elementary sites on the first day of school.
When district personnel became aware of the considerable number of registration forms that were not properly completed, it set up a system to handle the potential crush of parents seeking to register their children on Monday, Rundhaug said.
The impacted parents were provided a physical registration packet to complete at their children’s respective campuses to then take to the district’s main office to find placement for their children.
At the district’s office, all available personnel were directed to assist the steady stream of parents and children who were expected throughout Monday and into the coming week.
“I imagine that anyone who is present (Monday) will be placed” on Monday, Rundhaug said.
To place children in classes, the district took into account a number of factors, including where the student lives, the number of their siblings — if any — and the number of students already enrolled at the nearest campus, as well as at the other available campuses, Rundhaug said.
“It’s a methodical process — it’s not whimsical by any means,” he said.
Though Rundhaug acknowledged an undetermined amount of children would likely not be assigned to the school they had previously attended, district staff was sympathetic to their plight and doing all it could to help ease the process.
What should’ve been an otherwise pleasant first day of school for Sophia Villalobos turned into hours of waiting to find out what school she would be attending.
The fifth-grader had started the day thinking she was enrolled at Phil Swing Elementary, only to be told by site officials that she wasn’t.
The unexpected news sent her and her mother to the district office to await placement, where a district official unofficially indicated Sophia would likely be assigned to Witter Elementary.
“I think I’d rather go to Witter,” Sophia said after the district official had walked away.
Her mother, Maria Villalobos, acknowledged that she had failed to turn in the required proof of residency before the registration deadline, yet contended that a district official had provided her with a different deadline.
“If they would’ve told us, of course we would’ve came before,” Villalobos said.
The transition to an online registration system is expected to improve the accuracy of the district’s records and streamline how it shares the information with the state, Rundhaug said.
Though the decision to transition to the online system preceded his recent arrival, he is in full support of its potential to reduce the amount of time district personnel have had to spend correcting inaccurate records in the past.
This year the school year had started about a week earlier than years past, which also may have contributed to many parents missing Friday’s registration deadline.
“It is a cultural shift going to an online process,” Rundhaug said. “Anytime you go through a cultural shift there’s going to be challenges.”
He predicted that next year a minimal number of parents will have challenges completing the online registration forms.