Milton board keeps general open enrollment open, restricts special-education seats and adopts random waitlist

The Milton School District Board of Education voted Jan. 27 to keep regular open enrollment open at all grade levels for the 2025–26 school year while applying space limits to special-education programs and adopting a randomly generated wait list for any future openings.

Julia, a district staff presenter, told the board administration’s recommendation is to leave regular education open enrollment without limits for 2025–26 but to apply program-specific capacity limits to special-education services. She said occupational therapy, physical therapy, deaf and hard-of-hearing and vision services would be at capacity and that the administration had provided a grid showing available and unavailable seats.

Board members discussed equity concerns about first-come, first-served wait lists and the possibility that families without fast internet access or familiarity with the portal would be disadvantaged. To address that, the board adopted a policy change that uses a randomly generated list to allocate openings rather than a time-stamped queue. Julia said the recommended approach mirrors practice used by most districts in the Badger Conference and that the list would be generated only when programming and capacity made a seat available.

Board members also noted that current students will be “grandfathered” and retain seats for their remaining years in the district; the policy and the capacity grid apply only to new, incoming open-enrollment applicants. Julia said district staff will track wait lists and report periodically to the board on any wait-list activity.

The board took two formal votes: John moved to approve the 2025–26 open-enrollment recommendations as presented; Jennifer seconded. The motion passed on an affirmative voice vote. Separately, Rick moved and Jennifer seconded an amendment to Policy 51.13 reflecting the random-wait-list language and program limits; that motion also passed on an affirmative voice vote.

Julia told the board that state rules require any changes to open-enrollment policy be in place before the state’s open-enrollment window opens; district staff said they would implement the policy immediately so it would govern the next application cycle.

The board’s action affects families seeking special-education placements by placing program-level limits for the coming year while leaving general education open to out-of-district applicants. District staff will bring the detailed capacity grid and annual ratios back for review each year and may change the availability numbers before future application windows.

Speakers and attributions in this report come from the board meeting transcript and the staff presentation on Jan. 27.