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District sets April 8 live-streamed public lottery; SchoolMint rollout moves to registration testing
Summary
Springfield staff said the SchoolMint implementation is on track through a four-phase rollout; the district will live-stream a DESE-required public CTE lottery on April 8 at 4 p.m. and plans to publish ninth-grade assignments April 15, with full registration functionality planned for early summer.
Springfield Public Schools staff told joint subcommittees March 18 that the district’s SchoolMint enrollment and registration implementation is on schedule and that the public lottery required by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) will be streamed live on April 8.
Assistant Superintendent Jose Escobedo and Chief St. Lawrence described a four-phase rollout: (1) school selection (completed and closed), (2) lottery design and public lottery testing, (3) wait-list design and (4) full school registration. The district is running Putnam’s CTE selection first on April 8 at 4:00 p.m., followed immediately by Aspire; families will receive text and email notifications as results are posted.
Why it matters: The platform centralizes school choice, wait lists and summer registration forms and aims to reduce manual processes and errors that have caused delays in prior years. Staff emphasized rigorous testing of lottery design and communications to ensure compliance with DESE requirements.
Parent experience and notifications: Staff said the system will automatically notify families by text and email immediately after lottery results are published. Families who do not receive a message can log into the SchoolMint portal to view results. Committee members asked whether both parents can receive notifications; staff said the first year the system will send notices to the parent account used to register but that multi-recipient options can be explored in future iterations.
Next steps: The district will coordinate communications with enrollment staff and Chief Govan, publish required DESE notices in advance, and continue testing ahead of the April lottery and an April 15 release of ninth-grade assignments. Training for Student Assignment Services is scheduled for the week of April break.
