SchoolMint Now Providing Enrollment Platform for All New York Charter Schools
New York's common application for charter schools now powered by SchoolMint for 2016-2017 school year
SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- SchoolMint, the leading admissions and communications platform for K-12 district, charter and independent schools, announced that it will be supporting the online application for charter schools in New York City for the 2016-2017 school year.
The Common Online Charter School Application partnership with SchoolMint was a natural choice, since more than 70 charter schools in New York, including Achievement First, Uncommon Schools, and Democracy Prep, already use the platform. By bringing the remaining charter schools onto the platform, families in New York will be able to take full advantage of additional resources that come with SchoolMint, such as 24-hour customer support, text notifications to monitor the status of applications, and mobile apps designed specifically for both iPhone and Android.
The partnership with SchoolMint and New York City charter schools not only means just increased ease of use, but more communication between families and schools—an issue that has presented a significant challenge to schools.
"SchoolMint's mobile solutions were a significant factor in our decision," said Christina Brown, COO for the New York City Charter School Center. "The majority of New York City families applying to charter schools not only own mobile phones, but rely on them for daily access to critical services. Applying to a charter school is one of the most important decisions a parent can make for their child - we needed to make sure they understood the choices and that the process was simple and direct."
As part of this rollout with New York City's charter schools, tackling inefficiencies is the first priority. The new process requires parents to submit an application to charter schools online or on their mobile phones using the SchoolMint system. The schools then process applications, and in cases where there are more applications than seats, a lottery is run and a waitlist is generated. In New York City, nearly 50,000 students are on charter school waitlists year after year, and SchoolMint will allow schools to not just maintain high-touch interactions with these applicants, but pull insights that can help them improve the overall process.
"High-performing charter schools routinely receive more applications, and more requests from parents, than they can physically respond to. Over and over, we hear from schools that answering questions is not only time consuming for their staff, but distressing for parents who don't have the answers they need," stated Jinal Jhaveri, SchoolMint's CEO. "As a parent who has gone through this process, I know the frustration. We built SchoolMint for parents like us who wanted more transparency and communication around the application and enrollment process."
And parents aren't the only ones who benefit from improved communication brought by SchoolMint's tools. Automating messages results in a tremendous savings in time on the school's end. Since its founding in 2013, SchoolMint has grown to support thousands of schools and millions of parents throughout the country, fueled in large part by its simple solutions for these types of everyday inefficiencies faced by schools.
The Common Online Charter School Application, a project of the New York City Charter School Center, gives families a simple and streamlined way to apply to over 180 charter schools in New York City, that offer strong alternatives to traditional district schools. In addition to the centralized application for charter schools, the Charter Center provides advocacy and supports for the City's charter sector to ensure every child has access to a high quality education.
About SchoolMint
SchoolMint is an online and mobile admissions and communications platform for K-12 schools. Currently thousands of school districts, charter schools and independent schools use SchoolMint to manage all aspects of their enrollment and parent-school communications. SchoolMint's partnerships and direct integration with Student Information Systems like PowerSchool, Skyward and many others make it seamless for Schools to transfer data back and forth, without wasting thousand of hours of manual work and tremendously improving data quality. SchoolMint also works with big cities and districts to enable common application, universal enrollment and school choice.
About The New York City Charter School Center
The New York City Charter School Center is the leading expert and proponent of New York City's charter school movement. They help new charter schools get started, support existing schools and build community and political support so that high quality charters can flourish.
Media Contact
Margo Mendez-Penate
Sparkpr for SchoolMint
[email protected]
415.241.5207
SOURCE SchoolMint
Share this article